Legitimacy is an important but elusive quality, and it often comes from strength or the appearance of strength. Strength comes above all from social acceptance, and social acceptance works in mysterious ways that are certainly not altogether rational. It has to do with what people think other people are thinking.
by Michael Walker, American Renaissance, August 2008
When Jared Taylor invited me to speak at the 2008 American Renaissance conference, he asked that I offer an update to a talk I gave on European nationalist movements at an AR conference 10 years ago. Instead, I proposed a talk with the title “What Can I Do?” which he bravely accepted, noting that it was “the most difficult subject of all.”
During the 10 years since I spoke to an AR audience, I have come to feel that a deep interest in the comings and goings — alas as much going as coming — of diverse nationalist movements, interesting and entertaining though they are, has something of the voyeur about it. So many years have passed, so many false dawns have come, that it is time to look closely at our dilemma. It is time not merely to look closer to home, not just to look at them or even at us, but to look at me.
snip
If we know what we believe we come to the next thing we can do and that is stop apologizing. It’s easy not to be apologetic about our beliefs at an AR meeting. I mean stop apologizing in your daily lives. When we apologize we are on the defensive. For example, I never apologize for the British Empire. And as for the subject of reparations for slavery, I believe in reparations the black man owes the white man, if only for the fact that so many black people are alive today and thriving thanks to white hygiene and technical efficiency. That is reason enough for compensation and gratitude.