The 2017 American Renaissance conference was just recently held and it sounds like a sold out house and a resounding success. The talks don't seem to be available online either in audio or video form as of right now but I am sure that will change in short order.
Here is Richard Spencer speaking about the experience.
I like hearing that there were a lot of younger participants involved. It seems from what Richard said that it was a very familiar experience and yet very different as well and that is good.
What we absolutely don't need to have happen is for the movement to slip back into a bunch of old guys and bored rich kids having little conferences where they give speeches and then drink cognac in the evening before going home. That is not to say that there is not a place for conferences because there absolutely is. They are places for people to meet in "real life" and make connections and even better the talks end up on social media and tens of thousands of people watch them. No, my concern is that it is easy to fall into patterns and start planning the next conference without actually taking action. The Unite the Right rally is coming up and that should be a great place to see more energy infused into the movement but the greatest danger to the movement now isn't the "antifa", it is our own complacency and the temptation to turn this into an intellectual exercise. We aren't all landed gentry absentee farmers who can afford to sit around and ponder socialized medicine!
On the other hand the movement absolutely needs an intellectual base because that is our strength. We have the facts, we have the reason and logic, we have the history and experience, we just have the better arguments. Rather than relying on emotion and hysteria like the left, we make our case with facts.
We also need the youth with their energy and enthusiasm so I am happy to hear about the solid youth contingent at AmRen. I haven't done an extensive survey of the topic but it seems historically speaking that popular movements have an older, intellectual core and then a much broader and younger mass. Men my age pondering the Big Questions™ without a mass base are just conference goers. Mass movements of young people with mature intellectual leadership are just mobs.
Conferences like this, social media connections, real life "meet-ups", online forums and tools like Discord, real life events like Unite The Right, when coupled with the constant conflict and assault from the media, pseudo-intellectuals and thugs like Black Lives Matter and antifa, are rapidly connecting the different groups on the Right and helping to form bonds. We are never going to agree on everything and too many of us are more concerned with keeping the ideologically impure out or mutating the movement into their own personal brand to defend than they are with winning the war but we share many common enemies and many common beliefs. As a devout Christian I can partner with a guy who is into Odinism as long as he and I agree to not seek to use the movement to squelch the other's religious beliefs. There are some who want to push Christians out of the movement and some who see the movement as only a White Christian movement and both are in error. Decent theology teaches that most people are not Christians so we need to be realistic about that.
Every day the movement seems to gain followers and momentum. If we properly channel it now and avoid being undermined from within, our goals can become reality. In fact if we are to survive as a race and a culture, our goals must become reality. To do that we need each other, young and old, Christian and pagan, rich and poor, brilliant and not so brilliant.
I am looking forward to the conference talks and will post them here with some thoughts when they are available.
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