THE NEW MODERATE

by Erick Parker

Note from Rick: For the first time ever, The New Moderate is publishing an article by an “outside” author. It’s a long read, but I think it’s worth your time if you want a better understanding of both White Supremacy and Afrocentrism from a historical perspective — as well as greater insight into our current racial strife. The author is opinionated but unbiased, and he knows his history. Meanwhile, I’ll be updating several features at The New Moderate that I’ve been neglecting for far too long. 

What’s going on?

As I write this, there is a statue coming down or being defaced somewhere in the United States and in the United Kingdom. I don’t know which monument, or where it is, but in the times in which I live, all of them are possible targets and therefore any of them could be destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of people across those two nations are in the streets marching, attacking police, and destroying property.

Some targets are logical within any modern framework of values: Robert E Lee and company fought for slavery and a  nation in which to practice it, bolstered by a worldview so arrogant as to claim that divine mandate absolved its adherents of what their natural humanity knew to be wrong. The reality of what the Confederacy envisioned and attempted to bring forth was so harsh that even defenders of its last residue — the Confederate flag — must gloss over it with glassy eyes, ashamed to speak aloud the meaning of their self-proclaimed heritage.

Other targets are unpalatable to a conservative or liberal but logical within a leftist framework: George Washington and Thomas Jefferson recognized the error of slavery but were too deep into the system they inherited to take their opposition beyond rhetoric or half measures. Scholars since their day have emphasized the vision for the future held by Washington and Jefferson as a counterweight to the ugly reality in which they lived, but from a Leftist point of view that counterweight counters nothing; participation in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade cannot, in the Leftist view, be absolved by anything at all.

Still other targets are baffling from any mainstream perspective: Winston Churchill was one of the few leaders of his day to immediately recognize Hitler for the demon he was, and was among the first to lead the movement against him. The attack on the statue of Robert the Bruce in Scotland is baffling from any discerniable perspective at all; how on Earth could a man be racist who fought against white men?

All causes are effects, and vice versa. The only difference is time. The uprisings currently enveloping the West today are part of a cause far larger than almost anyone can realize. What is causing these causes, and why today? You will not get the answer to that question from the uprisers themselves, and a camel will pass through the eye of a needle before you get the answer from any media outlet. The cause of today’s events is the effect of events long ago, seemingly disparate at the time but now converged into a single entity and clarified by hindsight. 

But seriously, what’s going on?

Representatives of Black Lives Matter will tell you they want equality with White society within the Western world, including redistribution of wealth that was long ago distributed unjustly. They are not lying. That is in fact what they want. But BLM is itself a product of something much deeper that most members are not aware of. It is an expression of something far older and deeper within human nature, filtered through the language of the Liberal order. What is happening in this age of ours is a Black Folkish movement.

Race by its current definition has functioned as an anchoring concept in American society since its formation, to which all other considerations are subordinated and into which all policy is sublimated. The rationales change according to fashion but the underlying idea is constant. This system was able to remain stable only because White people collectively formed a supermajority in both population and economic power. Today, neither of those things is true. There is now room for multiple Folkish movements to both form and remain viable competitors. It is in this light that all events happening today must be understood.

Where I’m coming from

George Orwell said in his classic essay “Notes On Nationalism“:

“…there is a habit of mind which is now so widespread that it affects our thinking on nearly every subject, but which has not yet been given a name. As the nearest existing equivalent I have chosen the word ‘nationalism’, but it will be seen in a moment that I am not using it in quite the ordinary sense, if only because the emotion I am speaking about does not always attach itself to what is called a nation — that is, a single race or a geographical area. It can attach itself to a church or a class, or it may work in a merely negative sense, against something or other and without the need for any positive object of loyalty.”

Here I will attempt to resolve Orwell’s linguistic dilemma by giving a name to what he is describing: Folk theory.

All organisms have the same basic impulse: self-preservation and self-replication. Social organisms subordinate individual survival to group survival. In human society, ideas take on properties of organisms and form ecosystems of their own. The criteria for group definition can therefore go in two directions: values, or lineage. Usually there is a combination of both, but one always takes precedence over the other. Generally, people of a right-wing bent attach their identity to lineage and tribe while left-wing people do so for ideologies.

The American project began as an attempt to eliminate caste among the British colonists who created it. After they succeeded, the project evolved into one to eliminate caste among European-descended people in general. This was also successful but there was a problem: it could go no further than the European peoples due to racialist assumptions. This wouldn’t have been an issue if only European-derived peoples were present on American land, but there were others, obviously. The Black populations present, both slave and free, were not viewed as assimilable and therefore could only exist as a separate nation.

The problems now raging through Western society are the result of Western society trying to have it both ways: presenting itself as a product of reason and values-based communities, but in practice a pro-White Folkism. This is the foundational contradiction of Americanism, one that nobody has yet been able to solve despite spending lifetimes of effort. The old arguments about racial determinism are resurfacing and will soon be above ground breathing, but since the form is different, those adhering to liberal values and Enlightenment ideals cannot be counted on to counter them as they did before.

“God, the King, the Empire, the Union Jack — all the overthrown idols can reappear under different names, and because they are not recognised for what they are they can be worshipped with a good conscience.”

-George Orwell,  “Notes on Nationalism”

How we got here

Any explanation of the present has to start further into the past than any pundit will tell you. Any starting point chosen from the flux of history is never precise, but one must be chosen and with that fact in mind I choose 711 AD, when the Moors conquered what is now Spain. I promise you I’m going somewhere with this.

In the year 711, the initial Moorish campaign of conquest was conducted by Tariq ibn Ziyad at the behest of Al-Walid I, caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate. Against Ziyad’s forces, the extremely disorganized Visigoths of Western Europe were no match and by 788 most of Spain and Portugal were under Muslim control. Only the sparsely populated area to the north was left, and that only because there was nothing there that the Caliphate wanted.

Leftist and Muslim historians will, when talking about the Moors at all, highlight the parts that were objectively positive. They will point out that science and art flourished more than they had under the Visigoths; that massive public works were undertaken to improve the standard of living for the average citizen; that universities were created that were larger than any others in Europe at the time; that general hygiene improved. They will also mention that religious pluralism was the norm, with large populations of Christians and Jews present in addition to Muslims.

Religious pluralism is the point of most interest to me. Muslim Spain — called al-Andalus at the time — was in fact a place of religious pluralism. The majority of the population was not Muslim, and no decree in the history of al-Andalus ever required Christians or Jews to convert. But there are a few things missing from the rosy picture that apologists like to paint.

First, while nobody was forced to convert into Islam, the Moors certainly viewed Islamic theology and culture as superior to that of Christianity or Judaism. The policy was that anyone could live there as long as they submitted to Islam. This meant, among other things, that non-Muslims were required to pay a special tax, called jizya. They were legally second-class citizens, called dhimmis.

Second, the particulars of Islamic culture and lineage of the practitioners carried ethnocentric implications that a leftist today would view as racism. A Christian man was not legally allowed to marry a Muslim woman, while a Muslim man could marry a Christian woman if he liked. Add this to the fact that Islam allows polygamy while Christianity does not, and the results are obvious: over time, the genes of native Spaniard men would be bred out in favor of the colonizers. In any other context, a leftist would call this ethnic cleansing or soft gendercide.

Andalusian Spain was comparable to Apartheid South Africa, or Jim Crow America. Yes, it was multi-cultural and multi-ethnic, but not in the way that a progressive-minded person would approve. Rather, it, as in all other Muslim-controlled areas, was effectively a system of Arab Supremacy. The fact that Arabs jumped straight to an implied racism, sublimated into theology instead of first starting with an explicit one changes little.

While all this was going on, there was a general rise of Islamic empires everywhere in the Old World. Muhammad himself was a warlord, and his immediate successors continued his ways with gusto. Within a few short centuries, most of the Near East, most of North Africa and large portions of Europe were under Islamic rule. With political unity in place, the slave markets opened in earnest, with a steady stream of people kidnapped from their homes and brought to Islamic lands.

Slaves were taken from everywhere available, both dhimmis in areas under Muslim control and others that were just defenseless against pirate raiders. Mediterranean lands were favorite targets due to proximity, but few were safe, with the most distant raid taking place in Iceland of all places. The people taken were mostly put to work doing manual labor, but many were imported as sex slaves. Harems filled with young women and young men or boys who were typically castrated. All that effort, all that destruction, all that gleeful violation of women and emasculation of indigenous European and African men, ALL to satiate the lust of geriatric authoritarians who thought that God himself had given them the green light. That was reality for much of Europe and Africa for 800 years.

Midway through the Middle Ages, things began to change. Clusters of European tribes united into larger political units. The Crusades began in an attempt to reclaim territory that had been conquered by Muslims centuries before; only some were successful, but the dent made was the first of many to come. The Christian portion of Spain, once confined to the northern wastelands, embarked on Reconquista against the increasingly fragmented and bickering Caliphates before finally concluding in 1492 with the last remnants of Islamic control dissolved and the emergence of a free, united nation. This was by no means the end of Arab aggression and power — that didn’t happen until the 1800s — but the Reconquista signaled the impending end of Arab Supremacy.

“What I’d like you to think about with the DNA stories we’re telling is that they are that. They are DNA stories. It’s our version as Europeans of how the world was populated, and where we all trace back to. That’s our song line. We use science to tell us about that because we don’t have the sense of direct continuity. Our ancestors didn’t pass down the stories. We’ve lost them, and we have to go out and find them. We use science, which is a European way of looking at the world to do that. You guys don’t need that.”

-Spencer Wells speaking to a Native American man in The Journey of Man: The Story of the Human Species

Another cultural shift also happened during this time, equally important. These were the years in which most links to Europe’s pre-Christian past were severed. In the Germanic lands, the pagan Prussians were ethnically cleansed. In Britain, the pagan Saxons were converted and did not preserve in writing anything of what they believed before. Nearly all information we have today on the Germanic branch of pagan culture comes from the tiny outpost of Iceland, written down because exactly one man, Christian missionary Snorri Sturluson, valued it enough to do so, and even then the written lore was mostly unknown outside Scandinavia. 

The severance was able to happen in western and northern Europe because unlike the Greeks and Romans, the Celtic, Germanic and Slavic peoples either had no written language prior to Christianity or had just recently acquired it; either way, none of them had libraries. When full Christianization was completed, even educated Europeans had little reference for European culture outside the Greece-Rome-Christian Europe progression. In the 1500s the Reformation happened, and its participants were not as content to compromise with pagans as the Catholic church had been. The cultural slate in northern Europe was essentially cleansed of pre-Christian influences.

It isn’t difficult to see why these changes occurred at this time. With outside forces arrayed against you, it helps to have some commonality between yourself and others in your situation. The relatively recent field of theology provided a means to do that, and nations that embraced it were more powerful and vigorous than those that did not. These facts will become relevant in a few paragraphs.

The prelude to Lord of the Rings is the end of the Second Age, where the armies of humans and elves finally close in on Sauron and take him out of commission. The ring Sauron wears, which powers all the others, has damaged the world severely by this point, but the heroes are now in a position to destroy it completely and free everyone from the tyrannical cruelty it enables. But when Isildur gets to Mount Doom and is standing right over the lava with the ring in his hand, instead of tossing it in he pulls back and decides to keep it after all.

When abused people dream, they usually do not dream of a world without abuse. They dream of tables turned. The year 1492 started as a chance to really, truly innovate…then ended with the sowing of seeds of bitter plants, the fruit of which Whites nourished themselves on for centuries after and which is killing us today.

As soon as the Reconquista was finished, Queen Isabella found herself presiding over a resource-starved nation and wondered what to do next. Enter Christopher Columbus, who regaled the queen with tales of a faster trade route to India than what anyone at the time thought was possible. The queen was sold on the idea, and funded the real-life Isildur’s voyage.

The rest is well known to anyone educated in the American school system. Columbus ended up reaching the American continents, unknown to the Old World at the time. He was taken in by extremely civilized natives, far more so than himself. His immediate thought, according to his own logs, could be summarized as: these people are so cool, they’ll have no idea what hit them when I enslave them and take all their stuff. After doing just that, Columbus went back to Spain and his news kicked off European colonialism.

In addition to the Americas, Africa was now on the table. The trade routes established by Arab slavers were largely taken over by Europeans, who amassed more ill-gotten wealth with far more cold-blooded avarice than the Arabs did. A new idea was conceived: White Supremacy –capital W and S — as a formal agenda that would compete with Arab Supremacy.

When the English Civil War concluded with the formal abolition of feudalism, most English aristocrats were content to just turn their avarice outward to Ireland. Another class, the Cavaliers, instead fumed until a new land opened up where no crown would ever constrain their irrepressible desire to subjugate others. That land was Virginia. The Cavaliers moved to Virginia with their wealth, and there they used the model of feudalism as a jumping-off point for the large-scale slave plantations that would define the American South.

European society severed much of its link to pre-Christianity, but enslaved Africans were subjected to a complete severance. Their language, religion, knowledge of lineage –everything about their past was erased. The slate was scrubbed blank. Unlike pagans in Europe, Black slaves were not given the option of assimilation because they were viewed as a separate nation by design. This meant they had to create a completely new culture out of nothing, which as far as I know is unique in history; for everyone else there was something left over. For Black Americans, there was only the future. This fact will become relevant later.

To be clear, Yankees also had slaves at the dawn of the American nation. Nobody was innocent, but the Puritans and Quakers who populated the northern colonies lacked something the Cavaliers had in abundance: enthusiasm. Yankees tolerated slavery for utilitarian purposes because they needed labor and there was effectively infinite cheap labor to be taken from the African peoples. Cavaliers also needed labor, but that wasn’t the point. For them, the primary reason to own slaves was to own slaves. To them, the reduction of humans to livestock was an end in itself.

The Cavaliers after some generations did know that what they had couldn’t last, and they knew that what they were doing was wrong. Their situation was akin to a person who has just committed a serious crime and is known to the police: whatever he might think of what has been done, however much he regrets it, he’s in too deep to turn back. He can only go forward and try to manage. But even with their knowledge, the Cavaliers and their descendants managed poorly. When Abraham Lincoln offered them a way out, they chose to double down and secede. They were so addicted to slave ownership that they sacrificed hundreds of thousands of their men and nearly the entirety of their economy in a failed attempt to maintain their status. After they lost the Civil War, they used what was left of their power to reconstruct the antebellum conditions as best they could. Even with their would-be nation in ashes, they still could only imagine the very specific status quo that got them to their low position in the first place.

Really think about the mindset that post-Civil War Southern policy implies.White Southerners of that era would tell you they did not wish to live around Black people. They were very clear on that point. They also did not want to do what it took, or pay for what it took, for Black people to have their own economy that would allow them to get away from White society’s grasp; in fact, they lynched those who tried to organize back-to-Africa efforts! 

Compare them to defenders of the Confederacy today, who overlap with the Alt-Right and White Nationalists. They’re heavy on the idea of a White ethnostate, which makes no sense at all because Whites were a minority in the antebellum South. They hate Lincoln, even though he wanted to set up all Black Americans with their own state somewhere else, leaving America as an all-White country. They hate the idea of reparations for descendants of slaves, even though such a policy would go far toward their stated goal of an ethnostate and the only other idea they have is tiki torch rallies that work in the opposite direction. Look at their media today and they endlessly rail against Black people and Abraham Lincoln, even though Black people are only in America because the Cavaliers forced them to be here.

“When muscle failed…they turned to their magic.” -300

There is exactly one conclusion that can be drawn from the apparently contradictory positions being advanced: Confederates, Alt-Righters, and all the rest of their dreary ilk do in fact want Black people in their societies…as social inferiors. There is exactly one question you should be asking yourself right now: why? Well, here’s a hypothetical for you: if someone constantly tells you you’re inferior to him but never does anything above average himself, what would you think? What you’d think is that he fears your prosperity. You’d think he’s afraid of being inferior to you. A person in that situation will go to any lengths and make any sacrifice to never have to find out how he actually stacks up with you. Further, all the insecurities that inevitably come as a by-product of his work will cause him to devote 100 percent of his energies to his lie until there is nothing else to him.

Supremacy of any kind cannot exist in a monolithic society. Supremacy requires diversity. White Supremacy, the first form of racial supremacy to be codified as a religion (see: Savitri Devi and what Hitler has become in recent decades), requires a network of support. The more it is supported by the array of artificial structures, the more it needs to be supported. It becomes fragile. I think this is by design. The depraved aristocrats who set up this sick system first just wanted power and profit, but as cruelty made them weaker, they not only lost the desire to imagine anything else but the ability to do so.

Anthropologists used to think humans first evolved modern brains before evolving their bipedal physiology and opposable thumbs. They later discovered that the physiology came first, then came the larger brains to take full advantage of new physical abilities. Form follows function, mind follows body, spirit follows mind, imagination follows spirit and aspirations follow imagination. The overlords who have been steering White society for 500 years have parasitism ingrained into the core of their identity.

The first blow to the confidence of White Racialism as an organizing principle came during and after World War I. The final blow to that confidence, and the killing blow to the tenability of the philosophy itself, came after World War II in 1945. Every cultural assumption predating 1945 was rejected, reevaluated, or, if it was perceived as mission critical, covered up or downplayed in hopes that nobody would notice.

It was in this environment that a new worldview began forming. One that is only just now becoming relevant to mainstream discourse. It made headway in the 1960s during the civil rights movement but was soon marginalized. It is today coming to the fore again, with a new political movement. There is no official word for either the school of thought or the political voice arising from it that would be accepted by everyone. I won’t try to solve that problem, but I have to call it something so I will use Afrocentrism for the thinking and “Black First” for the movement arising from it.

Picking through the wreckage of 1945: the reaction

“It was right in everyone’s face. Tyler and I just made it visible. It was on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Tyler and I just gave it a name.”

-Fight Club

Afrocentrism is defined as a scholarly pursuit to center the accomplishments of Black Africans and the African diaspora. In practice, the methods of Afrocentrists encompass a far wider scope, so much so that it can be considered a complete systemic worldview that integrates history, science, sociology, psychology, politics, philosophy, and spirituality. That is therefore the way in which I will use it.

The primary founders of what is called Afrocentrism were Cheikh Anta Diop, John Henrik Clarke, Frances Cress Welsing, and Neely Fuller. I will focus on the work of Dr. Frances Cress Welsing because she has the most concise narrative and has most animated the modern proponents of Afrocentrism. She was also a mentor to the most influential Black Firsters today.

So far, the Afrocentrist worldview has been well outside the Overton window of maintstream politics. At the same time, views that persistently maintain a presence in society despite a complete lack of wider validation tend to have a grain of truth that is not found in the mainstream. The conclusions might be insane, and 80 percent of the so-called information might be lies, but there is usually a core truth that the follower gets nowhere else.

The core truth that Welsing validates in her audience is that Black people in the West consistently inspire visceral, hostile reactions from Whites that cannot be explained by ignorance and with which political policies are consistent. After first noticing that fact herself, Welsing set out to analyze and explain it in order to empower other Black people against the oppressive system under which they live. To do this, she combed through past positions and tactics of self-identified White Supremacists in order to glean useful information about the world and, more importantly, the psychology of White racists.

Second, the grain of truth is consistently denied along with the lies and false conclusions. That is exactly what the response to Afrocentrism has been. The right wing today offers endless, nonsensical denials of the fact that Black people have been oppressed or are still being oppressed after the Civil Rights act of 1965; denials of the fact that White American society has overtly organized itself on racial lines since the nation’s inception; denials that Black people have since day one been treated as a separate nation but denied their own state or representation within the existing one. The left wing, meanwhile, validates these truths but concludes its actions with policies that primarily benefit White society: integration…for Whites who want romantic/sexual relationships with Blacks; Affirmative Action…for economic empowerment of White women who do not wish to depend on White men; immigration of other non-White people…who function to dilute Black energies; a general push for fewer White people concentrated in any one area…which causes Whites to think of themselves as a distinct tribe and act accordingly. In each case you can see that rightists deny the premise, while leftists accept the premise but take the logic to a self-serving conclusion; to put it another way, rightists deny there is a problem and leftists push the wrong solution.

I will briefly discuss the denials of Black oppression. In regard to police killings, the most common argument involves statistics on police shootings. My response is simple: likelihood of a bad thing happening is not what causes anger and anxiety, but the knowledge that, if it ever does happen, then you will be blamed; your social status is determined by what someone else chooses to do to you, which you can’t control. It is the intense vulnerability, the knowledge that you don’t control your own life, that eats at you. Any arguments involving police or FBI statistics can be understood in this light and dismissed.

An aside: If you’re paying attention, you might notice that I don’t make all that much of a distinction between left and right on a functional level. If you’re partisan to one of those camps, please bear with me and consider this: to call yourself a leftist means you assume the existence of the right as a legitimate component of a larger structure you are both part of. You don’t act as distinctly as you might think. Moving on…

Another key ingredient of good rhetoric: certainty. Look at any theory that is not supported by mainstream science and you will see accusations against scientists that boil down to “they’re always changing their story,” meaning that scientists do not speak in absolutes unless the case for what they say is in fact airtight. Phrases like “the data suggests” are accurate and couching your conclusions in them in responsible, but not persuasive. That’s why so many people don’t trust scientists: people looking for actionable information don’t like to doubt and really don’t want “maybes”. They want to learn the truth and get on with things, especially when their situation is dire. And the situation of Black people in America has always been dire. They have had to deal with institutions of science, law, education and politics that work very well for the people they are intended to work for, knowing all the while that Blacks are not in the group those institutions are for.

Think of it like this: if you were a Black person who had to tolerate otherwise brilliant scholars and scientists who look at ancient Egyptian statues and conclude they were White people, you too would be leery of anything they say. Knowing that the most intelligent and prestigious people on Earth have a very specific and willful blind spot for harm done to you and the accomplishments of your ancestors, you would very much seek an alternative system. I know I would.

The last point about good rhetoric: it cannot be countered by denial of the premise. The only effective counter is to assert an alternative vision that better follows the premise, and to assert it more strongly. If you want to see how any mainstream school of thought will compete against the Afrocentrist vision, look at how well the 18 mainstream contenders in the 2016 Republican primary debates competed against Trump. For the entire lifetime of anyone born after about 1980, any sort of racist statements or attitudes were declared shameful and all symbols of its prior expression were suppressed. All millennials received this immunization in all official organs of official discourse. Yet, all it took for racialist ideas to force themselves into relevance once again was a single presidential campaign. Despite the left having control over how children are taught, and the atrocities to which they are reacting recognized as atrocioius by everyone, they were still unable to prevent the ascension of a man with a voter base that included Neo-Nazis as a visible component.

Imagine, now, the same racialist logic coming from a people with no recent history of power and therefore no recent atrocities that can be used to delegitimize them. A people who exist in a structure that explicitly denies they can be guilty of the core leftist sin, racism. Neither right nor left have any means of countering in any effective way. A right-winger can only call the person racist, which will have even less effect than saying “Democrats are the real racists!” A left-winger can make accusations of bigotry, which will have even less effect than those accusations did against the Alt-Right.

Make no mistake: it is within the logic of rhetoric that Afrocentrism as a unified worldview must be understood. Effective rhetoric is always based on some truth, but most importantly must feel true. It must also get everyone, intended beneficiary and opponent alike, to an emotional place that is advantageous to the speaker. I will therefore evaluate the basic claims of Afrocentrism twice, first by how factual they are and second by how potent the rhetoric is.

The Afrocentric narrative satisfies all the requirements of rhetoric. The narrative feels true to all the right people, it is asserted with absolute certainty, it solves practical problems (grain of truth). Afrocentrists tend to avoid debate, opting instead to have one person or a small number get the facts together, then teach others. Therefore, don’t expect Afrocentrists or Black Firsters to try to prove anything to you or convince you of anything. I present my own analysis of their talking points purely so you can understand.

What I hope to do here is convince you that Afrocentrism is a serious philosophy that is worthy of serious consideration and respect. Because know this: the Black First movement will be substantially successful (at least). The points I’m about to discuss might very well be taught to your kids in public schools as uncontroversial fact in the near future, and if you don’t know what to say back, you will only sputter and lose. If you can find any movement in history that was defeated by people who did not respect it, let me know because I can’t find one.

In 1992 Dr. Welsing published her central work, The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors, a compilation of essays published over the previous 18 years. Taken together, these essays comprise a complete worldview and provide all the materials from which nations are built. The typical response from White scholars and activists has ranged from silence, to faux-amused contempt, to dismissal of her as a crank or a racist, to addressing peripheral points with mischaracterizations such as her supposed “homophobia” which did not exist. Black scholars who respond positively to her, meanwhile, tend to describe her with quasi-religious adulation; they never say “Welsing said X and I think she’s right”, or “Welsing said Y and I mostly agree with her”, but: “Welsing teaches…”. Common unofficial titles for her are Queen Mother, Immortal Elder, and Grand Master Teacher. The primary value of her work is clearly myth-building rather than merely information. She has become a prophet to a critical mass of intelligent, active people, so it is therefore stupid to not respect anyone with the respect and influence Welsing has. I’m going to do what I haven’t seen anyone else do (believe me, I’ve looked): critically analyze her work.

Here is the overview of her theory as presented in The Isis Papers:

A) Melanin is a necessary component of humanity. White people are “genetically defective albino mutants” (her words) due to insufficient melanin

B) White people are aware of their inferiority. Racism is rooted in that awareness

C) Black genes are dominant over White genes

D) Realizing that mating with people of color would annihilate them genetically, Whites erected barriers to prevent that from happening. All thinking from then on was concerned with preventing genetic annihilation, their greatest existential fear. White Supremacy was constructed to justify their behavior and ensure survival.

Melanin is a necessary component of humanity

Is it true? Yes but misleading.

In Welsing’s view, White people are albinos. When she speaks on the subject, she insists on this point with the exasperated authoritativeness of someone explaining to a Flat Earther that the Earth is round. This claim is easily disproven. If Whites were albinos, then children of interracial couples would all come out with the same level of melanin as one of their parents, usually the Black one. That is observably not the case.

White people do in fact have melanin, just not as much as non-White people. In all the articles I’ve read and videos I’ve watched by Afrocentrists, I’ve yet to see anyone try to establish a threshold for how much melanin they think is necessary to no longer be deficient. Are Han Chinese melanated enough? Hispanics? They never specify. They just say melanin is good for you and never elaborate. Nobody disputes that a complete lack of melanin (albinism) is harmful, but that just isn’t the situation Whites are in so the point is irrelevant.

The best hint you’ll get regarding the melanin threshold is in the introduction to The Isis Papers:

“[The Cress Theory of Color-Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy)] summarizes and clarifies our experience as Black (non-white) people on a planet presently dominated by people who classify themselves as ‘white’ and who are a minority of the world’s people.”

The point made in this statement is one you will see often because it’s central to her reasoning: that White people are a global minority, which is true but not the whole truth. Yes, Whites are a global minority, but so is everyone else…unless your definition of Black includes everyone who is not White, which Welsing does whenever doing so helps her point. She tends to use the terms “Black” and “people of color” interchangeably, which is a definition of Black that nobody else in history before her has ever had, either officially or in practice.

A common talking point goes like this: White society uses the term “minority” as a term for Black people, when the reality is that people of color make up the vast majority of the world’s population. This can be persuasive right up until you think about it for a few seconds. The term “minority” is almost never used in a global sense, only specific geographical areas. In the United States, Canada, and Europe, Whites are in fact the majority and non-Whites are in fact the minority. In all African countries, Blacks are the majority and in all Asian countries Asians are the majority. Thus, Welsing is employing a rhetorical sleight of hand.

Rhetorical effectiveness: High

The idea that Whites are really just deficient Blacks is not a strong point in itself, but is a good anchoring concept for the Afrocentric worldview. In the old days, humans were divided into the general categories of Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid (no I’m not making those terms up, that was the system).

After the Out of Africa theory was proven true, mainstream scholars adopted a new system: race is just a social construct. “There is only one race: the human race” became the new consensus. Afrocentrists then stepped in and asserted that yes, there is indeed only the human race, but since the original humans were African that means the archetypal human is Black and all else is deviation. Whites, therefore, are not a separate race from Blacks, merely a deficient version of them.

A critical mass of Whites feel themselves to be inferior due to relative lack of melanin, and during the reign of White Supremacy were more aggressive than anyone else in setting policy. What cannot be done with muscle prompts you to do with machines instead, and Rage Against the Machine was not just a metaphor.

The past furnishes us with evidence of this. During the antebellum days, it was believed by some Whites that sex with Black women could cure STDs, or that putting your feet on a Black child could transfer gout to them. Try to get past the stomach-churning evil implied there, and think: those things could only be true if Black skin was superior in some way to White skin.

Black genes are dominant over White genes

Is it true? No

“My current functional definition of racism (white supremacy) is as follows: the local and global power system structured and maintained by persons who classify themselves as white, whether consciously or subconsciously determined; this system consists of patterns of perception, logic, symbol formation, thought, speech, action and emotional response, as conducted simultaneously in all areas of people activity (economics. education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex and war). The ultimate purpose of the system is to prevent white genetic annihilation on Earth – a planet in which the overwhelming majority of people are classified as non-white (black, brown, red and yellow) by white-skinned people. All of the non-white people are genetically dominant (in terms of skin coloration) compared to the genetically recessive white-skinned people.”

-Frances Cress Welsing, The Isis Papers

If one gene is dominant over the other, it gets expressed while the recessive one does not. This is observably not the case with skin tone, which manifests as a blending of the parents. It takes minimal effort to verify this fact: just look at people of mixed race compared to their parents, and you will usually see a person in between the two. So no, Black genes cannot “annihilate” White ones.

Rhetorical effectiveness: High

For the past few centuries, White society has operated on the one drop rule, which says that if you have any Black ancestry, you’re Black. That isn’t science, it’s just what happens when your baseline is at the far end of the spectrum where you can only change in one direction. But nonetheless, it has been a central fear of White Supremacists, a fear that has guided their policies and rhetoric. On the other side of things, the myth of dominant Black genes is incredibly energizing to a number of Black people who, traditionally lacking political and economic power, console themselves with the notion of dominating Whites through genetic means instead.

In political propaganda such as the Nazi documentary Triumph of the Will the enemy is portrayed not as strong or fearsome, but merely deceptive; a paper tiger, to use Mao’s terminology. The takeaway is that the only reason your group is on the downgrade is ignorance of what to do, meaning the only obstacle to total victory is the wisdom to see through your enemy’s lies. The myth of Black genetic dominance fits into this dynamic perfectly and the Afrocentrist community is saturated with it. The Afrocentrist says to White Supremacists: yes, that thing you’re mortally afraid of is true. You really are weak. You really are recessive. You are inferior. You should be afraid.

You can see just how effective this rhetoric is by watching Jason Black’s documentary film Race War, released in 2018. In it, Kaba Kemene said this exact thing to noted racialist Jared Taylor. Taylor just weakly hinted at Kaba’s hypocrisy before turning away in palpable disgust. He could do nothing else. He couldn’t refute the point without conceding other parts of his own worldview, so the only response left to him was to shrink.

White Supremacism is motivated by genetic inferiority

Is it true? No

According to Welsing, all acts of political domination of Black people are manifestations of White insecurity, intended to compensate for genetic inferiority:

“The Color-Confrontation theory states that the white or color-deficient Europeans responded psychologically, with a profound sense of numerical inadequacy and color inferiority’ in their confrontations with the majority of the world’s people – all of whom possessed varying degrees of color-producing capacity. This psychological response, whether conscious or unconscious, revealed an inadequacy based on the most obvious and fundamental part of their being, their external appearance. As might be anticipated in terms of modem psychological theories, whites defensively developed an uncontrollable sense of hostility and aggression. This attitude has continued to manifest itself throughout the history of mass confrontations between whites and people of color…The experience of numerical inadequacy and genetic color inferiority led whites to implement a number of interesting, although devastating (to non-white peoples), psychological defense mechanisms. The initial psychological defense maneuver was the repression of the initial painful awareness of inadequacy. This primary ego defense was reinforced by a host of other defense mechanisms.”

This assertion is constructed from pieces of what self-identified White Supremacists themselves have said, repurposed for new arguments and agendas. In the 1800s, when European colonialism was at its zenith, European colonizers looked to the past for a precedent to their contemporary actions. The findings of archeology, then a new science, seemed to confirm what colonizers wanted to believe: that in the mists of prehistory a race of blonde, virile, Aryan conquerors moved west from their Arctic home to displace the more diminutive, darker, less civilized natives of Europe. They asserted that this behavior was natural to so-called Aryans, due to selective pressure in the harsh Arctic conditions under which they lived, and that it made them uniquely both warlike and capable of war; natural aristocrats. Later a mythology grew surrounding this idea, metastasizing into a quasi-religion within the Nazi party under Adolf Hitler, who embraced tales of ancient Hyperborean supermen.

After 1945, this quasi-religion lost all expression in academia and the halls of power. The idea that all White people of the present day were the descendants of ancient Hitlers without any Churchills or Roosevelts to stop them was a deeply unsettling one, so a new model was embraced: the cultural changes in Europe occurred through peaceful trade with outsiders or internal evolution. Talk of virile blonde conquerors ceased until 1956 when Lithuanian archeologist and anthropologist Marija Gimbutas revived the theory in what she called the Kurgan Hypothesis. Gimbutas argued that matriarchal, civilized, intelligent peoples of what she called Old Europe were invaded and replaced by patriarchal, hyper-aggressive, barbaric, unintelligent, and cruel Indo-Europeans who destroyed the good things that Old Europe had going.

Gimbutas’ theory was influential in the burgeoning feminist movement, in the New Age movement, and among students of mythology such as Joseph Campbell, but as a scientific theory it didn’t gain a lot of traction until the work of David Reich in the early 2000s confirmed some of the basic events minus the Utopian view of Old Europe. Afrocentrists, however, picked up on the idea early and asserted that the Old Europeans were Black people who were replaced by Whites in the first act of White Supremacy.

The truth is somewhere in between. White people today are descended from three populations, in this order: West European Hunter-Gatherers (WHG), Early European Farmers (EEF), and Ancient North Eurasians (ANE). While there is genetic continuity through all three of these populations, each successive wave of newcomers precedes the replacement of the natives’ male DNA, so that today there is continuity only in the female line. This indicates that EEF conquered the WHG before being in turn conquered by ANE. The two big changes in culture and population were only technically not genocides. These facts don’t speak to any inherent kindness on the part of White people, but they also don’t support the idea of natural instincts for genetic survival either, much less “purity.”

Aside from all that, there is one fact alone that discredits the idea that racial supremacist aspirations are built into White DNA: the ancient Hittites, Greeks, and Romans all went from tribe to nation to empire to decline without ever conceiving of anything called a White race. Even the famously ethnocentric Greeks never made white skin an ideal, and in fact spoke more highly of Black civilizations than they ever did of their lighter neighbors to the north. If racial “purity” was really hardwired into the psyche of White people, the concept of a White race would have been invented in the BC era, not the seventeenth century. The evolution of modern concepts of race simply don’t correlate with diversity of pigment.

Finally, the conquering of Old Europe, while barbaric, does not stand out as particularly so when you observe that the same process occurred elsewhere. The book of Numbers 31 in the Old Testament states that the Hebrews (believed by Afrocentrists to be Black) under Moses killed every Midianite save the virgin girls who were absorbed into the invading population via sex slavery. Numbers 21, Deuteronomy 20, and Joshua 6 all describe Hebrew soldiers committing outright genocide against the Canaanites, sparing nobody. According to the Afrocentrists’ own reasoning, the Hebrews (Black) committed gendercide against the Midianites (also Black) and genocide against the Canaanites/Phoenicians (also Black). Genetic science tells of similar stories happening in Asia and the pre-Columbian Americas. Determining whether such things happened in sub-Saharan Africa before European Colonialism is difficult because DNA does not preserve as well or for as long there.

Ideas about genetic inferiority are heavily intertwined with physical inferiority. Looking over Afrocentrist thought, you will see the White physical inferiority angle played a lot. I want to briefly discuss that claim in the context of physical ability rather than just recessive/dominant genes.

Frances Cress Welsing says this in the chapter ‘Black Male Passivity’:

“…in the U.S., heavyweight boxing, basketball, baseball and football have all been taken away from white males (by Black males) as symbolic expressions of white male virility and manhood. White males have been left with only two major sports wherein they dominate (tennis and golf)…”

This is another rhetorical trick. Note how her statement only concerns the United States, because if she took a global approach, she would have to acknowledge that Whites in Eastern Europe compete with Blacks in heavyweight boxing just fine.

The best metrics for worldwide athletic ability are the Olympics and the World Cup in Soccer, because everyone in the world participates in them. Soccer is an especially good measure because not only does the whole world play it, it is accessible to almost everyone since it requires only a ball and some open space.

In the Olympics, swimming is consistently dominated by Whites despite them not having any more access to oceans than any other group of people. In boxing, White fighters took the gold medal in 5 of the 10 weight classes in 2016, and the longest-running world champion ever is Vladimir Klitschko, a Ukrainian who held the title for 12 years against opponents of all races.

In Soccer, race is never a good predictor for victory. Look at the finalists in the past several World Cups and you’ll see all-White teams beating all Black teams and vice versa; mixed race teams beating racially homogenous ones and vice versa. And so on. Look up any sports site’s Top 100 players ever, and Blacks are represented at the level a non-racialist would expect: the percentage of Black players match their percentage of the global population.

The reasons for Black athletes dominating basketball and boxing in the U.S. are for another essay. But suffice it to say: baseball and football were never “taken away” from White males, even decades after those words above were written.

Rhetorical effectiveness: High

Before 1945, the mainstream narrative within White society reflected the values needed to forge and keep empires. Emphasis was placed on power, domination, dehumanization of racial “others”, political unity, obedience to centralized authority, and marginalization of women.

After the early 1800s, when the last of the Muslim slavers were finally defeated, onto these values were added the denial that Whites had ever been anything else. Times in history where Whites were dominated by non-Whites, or when women had equal respect, were downplayed or omitted. Out went Moorish Spain, Herodotus’ description of Germanic views toward women, evidence of inter-ethnic mixing between various ancient European populations, the diversity of skin tones in ancient Greece and Rome, the Arab slave trade, the Barbary Pirates, and the political history of Iceland. Out went anything that might hint that White cultures ever existed that were anything other than what they were at the time of their greatest power. The result: the impression of White history that American school kids get today is one of endless horrible things that White people did throughout history.

Afrocentrists are just stepping in and saying, “yes that’s all correct but it’s shameful, not a brag.” Then saying, “you only got to where you are through deceit because you can’t win a fair fight with us.” Adopt the framework, flip the value judgment; very effective strategy, because a White person trying to refute you must also refute their own education and part of their identity.

Tariq Nasheed

Tariq Nasheed is a filmmaker primarily known for his Hidden Colors series of documentary films, and is host of the online program Tariq Elite. The general thrust of Hidden Colors is that Black people have contributed far more to the advancement of civilization — ancient and modern — than mainstream historical narratives admit. At a basic level, that assertion is true. Hidden Colors does contain true information on accomplishments of Black people in history you probably haven’t heard about. Remember my earlier point about grains of truth.

In addition to the true information about Black accomplishments and racist behavior against them, the various people interviewed make a dizzying number of claims that range from speculative (the inventor of Kung Fu was Black), to metaphorical but presented as literal (the blackness of the cosmos is really cosmic melanin), to provably false (Nasheed says Thor is based on African god Chango).

Almost no claim is ever sourced, nor is any evidence presented for most of the controversial points. Rather, everything is stated as though it was not controversial at all. This is powerful rhetoric, because it bypasses any sense of response to mainstream historians, instead simply asserting the Afrocentrist narrative as though it is the mainstream that viewers are already familiar with and therefore needn’t be explained. The body of work produced by mainstream scholars is dismissed in all instances except when it supports — or can be twisted into supporting — the desired narrative. Consider this approach, then take a look at the 2+ hour runtimes on each installment, and you’ll get a sense of just how much is said.

This rapid-fire delivery of claims you’ve never heard before is effective regardless of what you think of it, because what you think of it is probably what you are intended to. Those who are receptive to the identity-affirming narrative and in need of the Black First agenda will take Hidden Colors at its word and call it knowledge. Those who are not receptive to it will be confused, amused, or angry; i.e., not likely to take it seriously or respect it enough to respond in any effective way.

Evaluating every single claim is far beyond the scope of this essay. I will instead just focus on a few key examples that illustrate Tariq Nasheed’s larger strategy.

Claim: The ancient Phoenicians were Black

There is a strong genetic continuity between the distant past and the people currently living in that area. There were Black people there, and the Phoenicians were not racist against Black people, but to say “the Phoenicians were Black” is not true.

Why is he saying it?

White society has for centuries gone out of its way to not attribute any of its foundations to a Black origin. The Phoenicians were big players in the network of superpowers before the Bronze Age Collapse, so to say they were Black is to not be able to deny that White civilization owes some of its origins to them. The claim about Black Phoenicians ties into similar claims about European monarchs secretly being Black, which is made several times.

A good demonstration of White society’s discomfort around Black origins is in the debate about the race of the ancient Egyptians. Look at any debate, online or in person, on this topic, and you will see a curious thing happen often: for a LOT of the people arguing against Black Egyptians, there is an emotional component not found in other debates. It isn’t just a clinical discussion about ancient ethnography for them; they really, really just don’t want the Egyptians to be Black and are very clearly uncomfortable with the possibility.

This is obvious from one of the most common objections: that race as we currently define it didn’t exist back then, so it’s “presentism” to call them any race at all. To say such a silly thing is to willfully miss the point.

Claim: Thor comes from African deity Chango

This claim is made in Hidden Colors, in the context of a segment on comic book characters. It is an outright lie. Chango was a real person who lived in the 1400s and was deified after death. Thor is older than that by centuries as evidenced by etymologies of Norse names and places, as well as the fact that Norse myths were first recorded over a century before Chango the person was born. Hidden Colors 5 gives the impression that Thor was invented by Marvel Comics, never mentioning Snorri Sturluson or the Eddas he wrote down in the 1300s AD.

Why is he saying it?

Some White people looking for a sense of unique identity become dissatisfied with Christian spirituality because of its foreign origins and instead look to Norse spirituality because it is indigenous to Europe. (The “Jesus isn’t White!” position came from them a century ago, not Afrocentrists today.) Nasheed is clearly trying to head them off at the pass and create a sense of “nowhere to go” in such people, thereby demoralizing them and preventing others from making the attempt.

I will now give two examples of speculation presented as proven fact.

Claim: Beethoven was Black

Probably not. Beethoven did not have ancestry in an area with many black people, and both his life mask and death mask indicate Caucasian facial features. Hidden Colors never gives reasons for claims like this, it just makes the assertion and moves on.

Why is he saying it?

Most musical genres that are influential across the world today were either mainly invented by Black Americans (blues, rock, jazz, hip hop) or influenced by them (country). The various forms of music that fit under the Classical banner, however, are of European origin and predate colonialism. Thus, a White person who is uncomfortable with the influence of Black artists can take refuge in Classical as something entirely theirs. By saying the most influential Classical composer was actually a Black man, the “nowhere to go” feeling is created.

This bit also illustrates another technique that is used throughout the Hidden Colors extrapolation. Kaba Kamene says this:

“I enjoy Classical music. It’s soul music. It’s Black music.”

The obvious response to this is that Beethoven was hardly the first Classical composer. But by saying “Beethoven was Black”, then “Classical music is Black”, the film gives the impression that he was.

If you can get people to believe that everything of value today originates from Black people, you embolden Black racial pride and demoralize non-Blacks, especially Whites. If you can convince Whites that everything of their culture was stolen from Black people, the implication is that Whites can’t create anything on their own (dovetailing with assertions about melanin), you eliminate not only the rationale for White racism but the possibility that it could ever revive in the future.

Claim: Kung Fu was invented by a Black man

The Chinese have two conflicting accounts of the inventor of Kung Fu. One is that he was a White man with red hair from a western Asian tribe where those traits are common, the other is that he was an Indian man. Even if he was Indian, he still wouldn’t necessarily be Black due to the diversity among the Indian peoples. In the words of geneticist David Reich, “India does not have a large population, it has a large number of small populations. Hidden Colors never mentions the legend of a red-haired White man at all.

Why is he saying it?

Same as above. A good strategy of rhetoric is to make a lot of claims that your opponent will spend a lot more time refuting than it took you to say them. To someone on your side who is receptive to your message, all those points just make the case look overwhelming.

Claim: White people are not indigenous to Europe

In one of the Hidden Colors episodes it is stated that White people are indigenous to Central Asia, not Europe. I touched on this point earlier. To recap: White people are in fact indigenous to Europe.

Why is he saying it?

White society used to operate on what is called the right of conquest. In this view, if you are able to defeat invaders in your land, it is rightfully yours. If invaders defeat you and take your land, it is rightfully theirs. 1945 concluded with a paradigm shift in how rights of inhabitance are determined, to one in which a people’s right to inhabit a place is determined by whether they are indigenous to it, irrespective of how good they are at defending it. In this new way of thinking, the conquest of the Americas, Australia, and Africa by White settlers was proof that Whites had no right to be there.

This is relevant because the idea of Whites starting in Asia gets you to the conclusion that White people are not entitled to the same rights of exclusivity or nationhood in Europe the way that Asians, Africans, and Native Americans are. It’s a means of denying rights to populations of White people in their indigenous lands, and using the doctrine of indigenous rights to do it. Bold!

Claim: melanin is magic

Melanin is never literally described as magic, but might as well be. In Hidden Colors various people interviewed claim that melanin is an intelligence system, an apparatus for communication, is sensitive to frequencies of energy that un-melanated skin is not, and aids physical development. Dominance in music and some sports in America are attributed to it.

The question I had after hearing these claims: why do these alleged benefits of melanin-rich skin not help all people with dark skin? Many peoples of India are darker than what would be considered Black in the West, yet no music from India has taken the world by storm and Indian men do not dominate White men in sports. Further, why did the fantastic rise of electrical and interstellar technology come out of the predominantly White nations? Even if it was actually Black people who made all those advancements in silence, their credit stolen by Whites, why did Black people have to be in majority-White areas and professions in order to do all that?

Melanin theory would predict concrete evidence of superior intelligence in the form of African nations being more advanced than we are today long before colonialism ever started; colonialism shouldn’t have been possible at all, in fact, because Africans should have had such vastly superior technology and organization that European ships were rubber ducks by comparison.

Why is he saying it?

My instinctive response would be “a lot of White people are afraid of it being true” but that isn’t accurate. Truth is, I don’t know. But it’s something that Nasheed and other Afrocentrists bring up over and over and over again, so I felt the need to mention it.

Summary

What Afrocentrists did was study White Supremacist narratives and pick over them for useful tactics. Hitler said that Jews could not physically compete with Aryans, and so they turned to trickery to compete that way. Welsing adopted the same formula but replaced “Jew” with “White” and “Aryan” with “Black”. The incentive for this approach is obvious: White Supremacist narratives were lies but they worked. Over the course of only a few centuries, Europe effectively took over the world. You can’t be good if you don’t hate evil, but you also can’t get much done if you don’t look at the nuts and bolts of things with the dispassion of clear eyes.

Even when Hidden Colors presents accurate information, it is often presented misleadingly. The clear pattern is that Whites are always made to look weak, mediocre, or malicious, while Blacks are always made to look strong, exceptional, and humane. Hidden Colors talks about the Black boxer Tom Molineux but only to point out that his nickname was “The Moor” in order to show that the Moors were Black people; the fact that Molineux lost his two biggest matches to White Englishman Tom Cribb is not mentioned. It celebrates Moorish Spain, even though by the logic of racism=power+prejudice that works out to Black Supremacy. If you get all your information from Hidden Colors, you will come out of it thinking that Whites really are inferior on every level.

The Black First Movement

The Black First movement started with Marcus Garvey’s Back to Africa movement of the early 1900s, morphed into the various Black Nationalist movements of the 1950s and 60s, and is resurfacing today. The prior iterations of the animating idea — empowerment for Black people — ultimately failed, but this time is different. This time, it will most likely succeed. Soon, Frances Cress Welsing will be taught in at least some public schools. Every approach in the mainstream today — left, right and center — is ineffective and all will be radically altered or swept away entirely.

To prove this, let’s revisit a prior intellectual conflict. Since 1945, what is now called the Alt-Right was not only marginalized but, to the average person, entirely unknown. The only platforms for such ideas were small book publishers until the 1990s, when web forums such as Stormfront provided a platform for Alt-Righters to talk to each other — but even then it was an extremely niche topic. The people who held these ideas were passionate, but came almost exclusively from the lower echelons of society and had no influence at all.

The typical response from all parts of the mainstream was to simply call them racist and move on. The prevailing opinion about such ideas was that they should not be debated or refuted, just shamed and mocked because they were beneath consideration. Respectable people followed this strategy right up until the campaign of Donald Trump gathered momentum with the most vocal support coming from the Alt-Right. Trump is not in the Alt Right camp, but is not as against them as other candidates were and are, and that’s all that is needed. A lot of traditional conservatives and liberals were blindsided by suddenly having to explain why ideas about “race realism” and racial IQ differences were incorrect because they couldn’t just shut advocates up.

Look at how decades of anti-racist rhetoric did not stop the Alt-Right, then answer this: what effect do you think accusations of racism, reverse racism, bigotry, Black Supremacism, etc., are going to have on a historically colonized people who are used to being lied to, mocked, gaslit, dismissed, laughed at, and ignored every step of the way? People who, out of necessity, have developed the emotional strength to walk into a room full of people who hate them or are disgusted by them and maintain Buddha-like composure? These questions should answer themselves.

The Black First narrative goes like this:

1. White Supremacy is still in effect and is as big as it ever was

2. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s was the last opportunity for Black empowerment before now

3. The Civil Rights movement failed completely

4. It failed because of its big-tent approach that saw all oppressed, non-White groups as brothers and sisters in the struggle against White Supremacy

5. Thus, at its greatest moment of opportunity, when Blacks could have demanded anything they wanted through the ascendant Civil Rights movement, they demanded integration instead of economic empowerment

6. Integration was a complete failure

7. Black Americans are once again powerful enough to make demands, and this time will get economic empowerment via reparations for slavery made to Foundational Black Americans (Black descendants of American slaves)

The primary demand is reparations. This demand is reasonable, and I am certain it will be met. The question is how the political spectrum will adapt and which lies will then attain the status of orthodoxy after the current orthodox lies are removed. My own main concern here is that the notion of a postracial culture is not compatible with that of collective responsibility on the part of White people to make reparations, for the simple reason that such an action requires you to think of yourself as having a distinct positive racial identity. Today, most Whites who think of themselves like that do so only negatively, hence the phenomenon of “White guilt.” That is satisfying for some people, but most need a conception of self that is positive and inspires them to do good (with “good” defined as something other than submission and apologizing).

The leftist narrative left only a negative identity, which helped create the Alt-Right. I want the Alt-Right to go away, and for any other form of reactionary thought to not be the response to Black empowerment. I want justice, and justice means abolition of the abuse that is inherent in racial hierarchies. But unlike so many others in the mainstream, I don’t think Whites are uniquely capable of this kind of abuse, nor are they the only group with the power to abuse others in this way. What I’m getting at: Western nations need to attain the clarity of vision and the confidence to both empower Blacks who have been oppressed, without then morphing into Black Supremacy.

To be clear, I don’t see any scenario in which the hallmarks of White Supremacy (genocides, slavery, etc.) happen in reverse. That isn’t what it will look like. What can happen, however, is a society in which Black people are free to insult, threaten, or physically attack Whites with minimal or nonexistent legal repercussions, and where Whites are punished if they defend themselves in any way. There is already a version of this in American social mores, where a Black person making racially derogatory remarks to a White person is merely rude, but if that same White person responds in kind, he is racist.

The rationale for this is that Black people do not have institutional power or privilege while Whites do. This argument works if you’re talking about the big-picture population dynamics that drive political and economic trends, but it makes no sense in cases of individuals quarreling where the stakes are very personal and have nothing to do with larger forces. When you forbid individuals from responding to attacks, you demoralize them; a man is especially harmed because prohibition of self-defense is emasculating and prevents him from performing to his maximum potential. Multiply that by the number of people in society and you have what is effectively an institution that can be predicted to marginalize and ultimately wipe out the targeted population. Add all this to a culture in which one race of people is free to lie about history and slant the historical narrative in one direction, and you can see where this is going.

We’re already seeing this take form. Nick Cannon in July 2020 stated point B of Frances Cress Welsing’s ideology while on the air. He was swiftly denounced and forced to apologize, but look at which part of his statements created so much controversy: his comments about Whites being genetically predisposed to barbarism were ignored completely, while his claim that White Jews are not really Jewish got him in trouble. His outburst was only the beginning. Very soon, other prominent people who believe what he does will feel confident saying similar things.

The logic of formulating racism as power plus prejudice is sound, but if the Black First movement achieves its goal of complete control over narratives and institutions, the construct of Black immunity from accusations of racism will evolve into immunity from criticism of any kind, as well as the freedom to victimize. Whites will still be treated as though they are powerful long after they are not; present social mores will persist after the reasons for their existence are gone.

Tariq Nasheed was banned from Britain last year because the content of his Hidden Colors series was believed by authorities to incite violence. Accusations of Black Supremacism were lobbed at him, to which he responded the way he always responds to that and similar accusations: Black Supremacy doesn’t currently exist, and he doesn’t have the power to do anything.

I have already established that Afrocentrists believe Blacks to be biologically, genetically superior to Whites. Institutional power has nothing to do with it because any two worldviews can be compared with each other regardless of how much influence they have. If someone’s only defense of their worldview is that they “don’t have the power” to implement it, but simultaneously are trying to get the power to do so, the outcome is easy to predict.

Conclusion

In 2008, when Barack Obama was elected president, it was a common belief that we were transitioning into a postracial society. I believed it myself. To say that belief was premature is to make the greatest understatement of the century. Like it or not, Folkish impulses and agendas are with us and will be based on ethnic lines for the foreseeable future.

What is happening right now in the West is at least a deep cultural shift, at most a revolution. It was always going to happen because the historical trends set in motion 500 years ago could conclude no other way. The one certainty I can offer is that all the current talking points you’re used to hearing, left or right, are maybe a year away from being useless and antiquated. You have to reevaluate your assumptions about the world and what you believe, regardless of who you happen to be. It isn’t going to be comfortable for anyone, but productive life never is.

Read The Isis Papers. Then watch the Hidden Colors series. Study the content and the rhetoric, research the claims made, take them seriously and study them with an open mind so you aren’t taken by surprise. Don’t fall into the trap of denial or dismissal, but acknowledge what is true and incorporate those truths into your thinking. Acquire the knowledge you need to be certain, and to calmly assert your view no matter how others react. Only then will you be able to defeat the bad ideas moving through our institutions and culture.

We are at a crossroads today. Which way we go now will decide which revolutionary shift happens. The choice that all people face, always, is progression or regression, and never in our lifetime has that fact been more apparent than it is today. Learn how to progress, then go do it.

Erick Parker is a writer and history lover who is never satisfied with the little picture. He can be found on Twitter at @trailer_parker

Rick Bayan is founder-editor of The New Moderate.

In my darker moments, I’ve wondered what it would take to reunite today’s obstinately tribal America into something resembling a nation. A deadly plague? A world war? An alien invasion?

Well, it turns out we have all three on our hands.

1) Yes, a latter-day plague is spreading around the globe and snaking its way into the lungs of millions. The novel coronavirus can live on metal and plastic surfaces for days at a time, waiting patiently for unwary humans to serve as hosts and carriers. With an estimated mortality rate of just under 3% (up to 10% for older patients), COVID-19 can’t compare with the more lethal Ebola, SARS or MERS – but it blows them away in terms of sheer infectiousness and potential economic devastation.

2) Nations everywhere are mobilized as if for war. Trump even invoked the Defense Production Act, a radical measure that compels private enterprise to mass-produce needed supplies and equipment for the public good during national emergencies. (More on that later.)

3.) The COVID-19 pandemic is essentially an alien invasion; the planet has been set upon by an invisible but deadly life-form intent on destroying human civilization. The bugs might have the collective IQ of a barnacle, but they’ve proven their wanton genius for disrupting individual lives, schools, families, businesses, the stock market, and the very fabric that binds people together: an indispensable commodity known as social life.

Has the COVID-19 pandemic succeeded in bringing us together as a nation, despite its penchant for separating us as individuals? Sadly, no – at least not yet. We’re more wary than ever of strangers in our midst. We recoil from our fellow humans as if every casual encounter could prove fatal.

You’d think a massive invasion capable of afflicting untold millions of Americans would ignite a spark of unity, of mutual regard and sympathy, of renewed respect for the struggles of our neighbors. During the Great Depression and World War II, the vast majority of Americans rallied together regardless of class or politics.

Instead, our progressive friends have been ripping into the president at every opportunity – justifiably for his delayed response to the pandemic and his boneheaded rejection of testing kits from the World Health Organization… almost as justifiably for his predictably baseless optimism and hyperbole… but incredibly, even when he authorized a radical response with the kinds of measures (like the aforementioned Defense Production Act) that a New Deal Democrat might have ordered during a similar emergency.

When Rep. Ilhan Omar, certainly no moderate, praised Trump for his decisive actions, some of my progressive friends (and several pundits) went into full TDS – Trump Derangement Syndrome. Omar broke an unwritten commandment: progressives are simply not allowed to praise the unholy resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for any reason. I found myself in the unlikely position of defending Omar for defending Trump, when I’m not a fan of either – and of course I took heat on Facebook for my reckless intrusion into a “progressives-only” discussion. 

The coastal elites continue to waft their contempt for the corn-fed masses of Middle America – especially Trump’s ever-loyal base. Our ongoing alien invasion still hasn’t given them the heart to understand why a group that feels despised by progressives would veer away from progressive politics and cling to a blunt demagogue for leadership.

As for the conservatives and libertarians – well, some of them have stepped up and shown themselves to be true disciples of Ebenezer Scrooge – the pre-Christmas Scrooge, not the reformed Scrooge. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick went as far as to suggest that older Americans should willingly sacrifice themselves for the good of the economy.

Ah, the blessed economy! Holier than human life, and just as fragile. It’s easy to understand why conservatives would be wringing their hands over a devastating months-long suspension of business and revenues; I understand it, too. Of course, the big corporations stand to benefit from the record $2 trillion stimulus package recently approved by Congress and Trump himself. Let’s just hope the employees of those companies – not to mention all our vulnerable mom-and-pop businesses – see their share of benefits as well. With their income on hold, how many sidelined employees and small businesses can survive without an infusion of public money?

Our libertarian friends must be going apoplectic at the thought of government laying its heavy hand on the free market, even to save businesses crippled by the pandemic. You’d think such interventions would convince even the most obstinate social Darwinist that government is not always the enemy; in this case, it’s the white knight charging to the rescue. Will it convince them, though? I suspect they’ll be fretting about the slippery slope that leads to socialism, and I’ll leave them to their fretting.

Despite the apocalyptic scope of the COVID calamity and its politicization by our resident tribalists, it’s been heartening to witness stellar examples of human warmth and decency: quarantined Italians singing to one another from their balconies… restaurants offering free meals to children… grassroots humanitarians taking food and supplies to isolated senior citizens.

Extraordinary times usually call for extraordinary leaders, but we can’t depend on an inarticulate narcissist for inspiration – even when he happens to do the right thing. We can fantasize about having an FDR, a JFK, a Reagan or an Obama to guide our battered spirits through the pandemic and speak to our better angels. (We Americans desperately need to get in touch with our better angels.) Yet when we hear dire warnings that up to three-quarters of our population might catch the coronavirus, no amount of soaring rhetoric – let alone hand-scrubbing and social distancing – will ease the dread.

It’s up to us, as free individuals living in an interconnected community, to transcend the tribal and embrace the good. We can start listening to voices beyond our private circles, appreciating them for their character, their gritty wisdom, and the unique stories they tell – regardless of whether they vote red or blue. We can bond more deeply with our families and friends, despite the distances between us. If all goes well, we’ll never again take their presence for granted.

We’ll never again take our own existence for granted, either. We all know that our lives are finite, but maybe some of us have been running on autopilot for too long. Our bodies are miraculous machines – our minds even more so – and we should appreciate them while they’re still in working order.

We should probably wake up to the beauty and fascination of our surroundings, too. I’m a habitual walker, and I’ve noticed how poignant it seems that nature is blooming spectacularly even while our minds are consumed by the ongoing plague. Spring will continue to work its magic without sanitizer or safe distancing; you can’t quarantine a grove of cherry trees.

The wisdom of the Earth makes our tribal politics seem petty and pointless. Who were all those Democrats on the debate stage just a few months ago? Does anyone still think about Reince Priebus or Steve Bannon? We’re all transients here, so let’s stop squabbling and start enjoying our stay as friendly neighbors on this endlessly diverting planet. 

Will we still need to throw ideas around for our amusement, edification and disagreement? Of course – as we should. But let’s hope this once-in-a-lifetime pandemic has taught us Americans that life is too short – and too great a gift – to squander by holding a grudge. 

Rick Bayan is founder-editor of The New Moderate. His three brilliant (but sadly unsung) essay collections are available in e-book form on Amazon.com for only $2.99 each. Just search under “Rick Bayan.”

The other night, as my 16-year-old son was grappling with his insane homework load – seven (count ‘em!) assignments in a single evening – I started wondering why we Americans torture ourselves (and our young people) with such vast and insurmountable quantities of busywork. 

Is it because we love to toil for the sake of toil? Is it for the bragging rights? (See how industrious I am, you effete, brie-eating Euro-softies!) Or could it be that we don’t know how we’d face the ghastly void of life without a well-defined purpose? 

Yes, we’re desperate to avoid the void – by filling it with chores, mental clutter, media addiction… and, of course, rancorous and divisive politics. In just the past month – February, A.D. 2020 – we’ve been treated to a mesmerizing, distracting, void-filling carnival of rip-roaring American political squabbling and nastiness. A few examples:

• The Senate acquitted President Trump of “High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” thereby sparing him the ultimate indignity of removal from office. After much acrimonious speechifying on both sides, the votes almost entirely followed the partisan (i.e., tribal) divide. (Strange, isn’t it, how the partisans can look at the same person and see two wildly different presidents.)

• The next evening, during the annual State of the Union Address, Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the terminally ill radio polarizer Rush Limbaugh and promoted a 100-year-old Tuskegee Airman to the rank of brigadier general. (Guess which gesture the anti-Trump media chose to focus on, and which one they chose to ignore.)

• At the conclusion of Trump’s SOTU, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripped the text of the president’s speech in full view of Congress, the nation and almighty God – an ostentatiously naughty deed that left no room for reconciliation.

• Not one to be intimidated by his Democratic foes, Trump promptly dismissed the two underlings who testified against him during the impeachment trial. The move was his prerogative as their boss, but it was a public relations disaster: it cemented Trump’s reputation as a thin-skinned tyrant who needs to surround himself with groveling yes-people.

• Meanwhile, during Black History Month, Lebanese-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib argued that we must create yet another racial identity group: Middle Easterners and North Africans (MENA). Sorry, Rashida, you’re as white as Danny Thomas (remember him?), and we Americans don’t need to be splintered any more than we already are. We have more than enough self-interested racial/ethnic/sexual/gender factions shouting “Me! Me! Me!”

• The ongoing Democratic debates deteriorated into a depressing series of insult-fests. You’d think it would have been an easy matter to elevate a candidate who could beat the hands-down looniest president in American history, but the Democrats seem intent on handing Trump another four years. As the candidates battered one another with surprising ferocity, they might not have noticed that Trump’s positive Gallup Poll rating edged out his negative rating this past month for the first time ever.

• While former New York Mayor and current multibillionaire Michael Bloomberg saturated the airwaves with his bottomless fount of campaign ads, “woke” Democrats essentially forced him to apologize for the “stop and frisk” policy that disproportionately targeted black neighborhoods under his watch. (Of course, the policy also dramatically slashed the number of black crime victims, but nobody on the left seemed to care about that inconvenient statistic.)

• As the shortest month of the year finally drew to its close, Trump gave us a foretaste of his second term: he called for liberal Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor to recuse themselves from any case involving him or his policies. He proclaimed that the dreaded coronavirus pandemic would pass over these states but assigned his science-averse VP Mike Pence to oversee the matter, just in case. And of course, he continued to threaten cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Does his largely cash-strapped base hold it against him? Of course not.

February’s sound and fury gave us an abundance of diversions and distractions to help us avoid the void. Like my son’s overwhelming homework load, our petty Lilliputian political squabbles kept us from looking inward too much for our own good… kept us off the streets… kept us from being hypnotized by the sights, sounds, sensations and textures of real life: the crisp winter air, the glowing sunset sky, the warmth and crackle of a fire in the fireplace, the bracing taste of coffee in our cup, the cheery bonhomie of old friendships and new acquaintances. 

Our manmade diversions also distracted us from the high drama of a world in disarray: the horrific brushfires in Australia, with an estimated one billion animal casualties… the highest temperatures ever recorded in the Antarctic… the inexorable spread of coronavirus from China to the outside world (and its impact on the ever-skittish stock market). 

In the end, what matters most tends to get lost in the ambient chaos: the ability to lead a satisfying and useful life on a healthy planet – a planet overseen by benevolent governments that serve the needs of the governed without favoring one class of people over any other class. Call it the moderate’s dream… I call it sanity.

Rick Bayan is founder-editor of The New Moderate. His three collections of darkly humorous essays are available as e-books on Amazon for just $2.99 each. (Just go to Amazon and search under Rick Bayan.)