"Identitarianism” is a newfangled euphemism for white supremacy. Coined around the start of the 21st century by the intellectual wing — such as it is — of the French far right, it has since been adopted by white nationalists the world over. Last October, I attended a conference in Washington convened by the identitarian movement’s American division, the National Policy Institute (NPI). It was fitting that the gathering would occur on Halloween, as about 150 ghouls filled the ballroom of the National Press Club. The crowd was almost entirely male, many of them (apparently taking advantage of the under-30 registration discount) young. A conspicuous number sported the Hitler Youth–inspired hairdo known as an “undercut,” short on the sides with a long part on top. In between encomia to the recently deceased anti-Semitic newspaper publisher Willis Carto and a recitation of pagan reveries by a white-separatist folk musician, attendees perused bookstalls featuring the conspiracy-mongering American Free Press newspaper and the Holocaust-denying Barnes Review...I obviously don't care for genuine hardcore white nationalists, as they're usually completely open about their racist positions. But I think it's a mistake to blow off the larger ideological framework developing on these issues, because lots of regular folks are going to identify with identitarianism and be completely free of the slightest bit of genuine white supremacist racist inclinations. Indeed, the sad part is that leftists will continue to attack regular folks worried about the Muslim invasion as racist "Islamophobes" when they're nothing of the sort. Notice all the articles in Europe about "far-right" protests and you get the picture (see USA Today, for example, "Clashes feared at banned anti-Islamist rally in Brussels").
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