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Notes -
These gains were made, at least overtly, by the color-blind crowd like Elon and Rufo. Which – if the argument is "well this happened because the gigachad white nationalists are good at pushing for white interests but it had to be cloaked in the guise of meritocracy so it doesn't spook normies" again I would just suggest that white nationalists just convert into being color-blind meritocrats, since clearly that's actually politically possible to make inroads that way and apparently also in white interests and it's unclear what added value white nationalism brings to the table.
Now – maybe it would be bad for white nationalists to lie about their views (even if you think their views are bad, maybe it does damage to the soul to lie) but it probably doesn't do any damage to the soul to not make big splashy protests or give juicy quotes to journalists and the like. And (this is probably what I should have led with, in the other post) if one was pushed towards white nationalism as a reaction to some very bad strains of anti-white sentiment, now is exactly the time to rethink that and get behind a framework that is more meritocratic and more color-blind.
Now – definitely true that any argument can be a soldier. But am I wrong that color-blind meritocracy is the winning issue here, not white nationalism? And am I wrong that actual white nationalism is politically impossible in the United States of America (100% seriously, I think white nationalists would be engaged in a vastly less quixotic quest if they started preparing now to found a whites-only space colony in an O'Neill cylinder).
My concern here is two-fold: I don't want people to think "oh look white nationalism is ascendent" because color-blind meritocracy is ascendent and then explode all the good potential that color-blind meritocracy could unlock. And I think that people who are tempted by identity politics can aim higher.
Fair.
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