Introduction

The goodwill towards the Southern states that one might expect from monetary reformers has been clouded by the claim that the War of Secession was instigated by international bankers for the control of the USA, and specifically that it was the South that was for this purpose backed by the Rothschilds and other European banking dynasties in Europe. While monetary reformers often allude to Abraham Lincoln having issued state credit in the form of the “Greenbacks,” and therefore Lincoln has become something of an icon among those who advocate alternatives to the usurious world financial system, seldom realized is that the Confederacy issued its own “Graybacks,” and did not have any type of fellowship with international finance. The condemnation of the South often includes an anti-Semitic element, because the Confederate Secretary of State, Judah P Benjamin, was Jewish, and from there flights of fancy roam free, including the claim that Benjamin was a “Rothschild agent” and even a that he was a “Rothschild relative.” This paper examines the claim as to whether the Rothschilds and other banking dynasties supported the South, and in particular examines the manner by which the Confederacy was really funded.

The “Grayback” served the Confederacy as the “Greenback” served the Union, and perhaps moreso, as the Confederacy was shut out of financial markets. It was a pragmatic move and one that better served the Confederate States of America (CSA) by force of circumstances than by going cap-in-hand to the international money-lenders, as most states then did and still do. Hence, the “Grayback” is an example of state credit used on a wide scale that allowed the functioning of an economy without recourse to usurious debt, and stands with other examples such as the use of Reserve Bank state credit by the 1935 New Zealand Labour Government.[i] Given the present widespread economic tumult caused by the compound interest intrinsic to the debt-finance system that controls much of the world, a concentration of alternative systems of banking and finance are of vital importance, but are presently problems seldom understood by the “Right.” This was not always the case, as exemplified by the writings of Ezra Pound[ii] and the “Social Justice” movement of Father Coughlin,[iii] et al.

Origins of a Myth

One of the first, if not the first, to circulate the allegation that the Confederacy was controlled by the Rothschilds as a means of weakening the Union and of taking control of the banking system was the Czarist émigré Count Cherep-Spiridovitch, who cites an alleged interview with German Chancellor Bismarck in 1876:

The division of the United States into two federations of equal force was decided long before the civil war by the High Financial Power of Europe. These bankers were afraid that the United States, if they remained in one block and as one nation, would attain economical and financial independence, which would upset the financial domination over the world. The voice of the Rothschilds predominated. They foresaw tremendous booty if they could substitute two feeble democracies indebted to the Jewish financiers for the vigorous republic confident and self-providing. Therefore they started their emissaries in order to exploit the question of slavery and thus to dig an abyss between the two parts of the republic....[iv]

The alleged quote from Bismarck goes on to praise Lincoln for being conscious of the plans of the “Jewish financiers” and for bypassing them with his own credit, for which he was assassinated.

The Czarist Count’s interest in this matter might be accounted for by:

1. His tendency, common among Czarist émigrés in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, where Jewish involvement was regarded as predominant because of the conspicuousness Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Uritsky, Sverdlov, et al, to seek out explanations for all upheavals by tracing their origins to the Jews. The Count’s book, The Secret World Government, ascribes much of history to the “hidden hand” (sic) of Jewry. The Count sees the same “hidden hand” that killed Czar Nicholas and his family after the Bolshevik seizure, as being that which also assassinated Lincoln.[v]

2. The historically good relations that had existed between the United States and Czarist Russia. Cherep-Spiridovitch alludes to Russia being “friendly to the Union cause and in 1863, when the success of the cause looked doubtful, a fleet of Russian war ships came into the harbor in New York.”[vi] Cherep-Spiridovitch states that Czar Alexander II’s orders were for the Russian fleet to be ready to “take orders from Lincoln.”[vii]

These accounts have been repeated ever since, especially among Right-wing conspiracy theorists, but are incorrect. The circumstances of the Russian Atlantic Fleet’s entry into New York harbor are related by Marshall B Davidson, who captures the imagery of welcome and jubilation among New Yorkers at the arrival of the Russians. Davidson states that at the time there were many rumors as to why the Russians had arrived, chief among them being that they were there to assist the Union against the South.

. . . In any case, New York seems generally to have assumed that this was a “friendship visit,” and must indicate Russian support for the Northern cause—a legend that lost nothing in its retelling, over the years, and that was not finally put to rest until 1915.[viii]

The reference by Davidson that the matter was “finally put to rest” in 1915 is optimistic as the legend has remained firm among certain quarters, Cherep-Spiridovitch’s 1926 book being one such example. Marshall states that at the time the Russian ships sailed into New York and San Francisco, a potential for conflict had emerged between Russia and England, Austria and France over Russia’s suppression of the Polish revolt. In 1915 Dr Frank A Golder, having had access to official Russian records, wrote in the American Historical Review that the Russian visits were not ones of “friendship,” but had been highly secret manoeuvres to get the best of the Russian ships into safe ports, the concern being that they would be trapped in the event of conflict with the European powers.[ix] New York and San Francisco were the only convenient ports for the best ships of Russia’s Atlantic and Pacific squadrons. From here the Russian ships could harass British commercial routes. The manoeuvre seems to have succeeded, states Davidson, as there was no ultimatum against Russia. “That they came as interested supporters of the Northern cause was a notion concocted and nurtured by the Unionists who were only too happy to imagine it to be true,” writes Davidson.[x]

However, ninety-five years on from the article by Dr Golder, and the image of an alliance between Lincoln and Czar Alexander against “international financiers” and/or the Jewish “hidden hand” is still being nurtured. While those with what one might call a cynical attitude towards Jews see the presence of Judah P Benjamin as Confederate Secretary of State as sufficient reason to consider the South as nothing but a Rothschild contrivance, monetary reformers see Lincoln in heroic terms for his having issued the Greenbacks as state credit to bypass plutocratic interests. What is overlooked is that the Confederacy issued its own Greenback equivalent, known as Graybacks. Hence the scenario is that, for example, according to Rochelle Ascher, a supporter of Lyndon LaRouche, Lincoln fought the “British-backed New York banking system” bringing banking under control and issuing $450 million state-created Greenbacks to fund the war.[xi]

The very fact that the Confederacy was not supported by international finance caused the necessity of the Confederacy to generate its own credit. While an examination of the efficacy of government currency issue is not the subject of this essay, what should be noted is that price-inflation was caused in significant part by large-scale counterfeiting of Graybacks from the North, and was also affected greatly by public confidence or loss of confidence, depending on the development of the war. State currency amounted to 60% of the CSA revenue during the war.[xii] Marc Wiedenmier states that the money issued by the CSA was interest-free:

. . . [N]on-interest-bearing money remained the predominant medium of exchange in the Southern Confederacy despite the existence of large quantities of interest-bearing money…. state and Confederate governments forced banks to accept both types of money through de facto legal restrictions.[xiii]

The diehard manner by which myths about the Confederacy persist is accounted for by the presence of Judah P. Benjamin, more than by any other factor. Such a “Court Jew” (sic) can only be explained. So it goes, by the existence of a high-powered conspiracy that placed him in that position. We have previously seen how this attitude was taken up by the Czarist émigré Count Cherep-Spiridovitch, in 1926. The White Russian émigrés were to become very influential in shaping anti-Semitic ideologies outside Russia. Two obvious examples are Alfred Rosenberg who was to have a major input into the ideology of the National Socialist party in Germany; and Boris Brasol, a Czarist jurist who had been a member of a Russian trade delegation in the USA when the Russian revolutions destroyed his world, and who maintained influential contacts and was instrumental in popularising the Protocols of Zion in the USA. At any rate, the anti-Southern attitude was taken up by leading American conservatives whom one might normally expect to support the aristocratic and agrarian virtues and states’ rights of the South against Northern industrialism and plutocracy, and might have done so if it was not for the pervasive bugbear of Judah P. Benjamin.

One of the most prominent of the American conservatives was Gerald L. K. Smith, a force in his day first as aide to Louisiana’s Huey Long, then as an eloquent “America Firster” along with Father Coughlin, Charles Lindbergh, et al.[xiv] During the course of his long career attacking Communism, Zionism and Judaism, including what he states was his campaign in the South that was instrumental in the creation of the “Dixie Party,”[xv]Smith published an article on the War of Secession in which he states that,

. . . if we look behind the scenes we will find that the “slave question” was but the surface issue. Below the surface ran a current of intrigue that ended with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln because he was determined that the United State be free from the bondage of the international bankers.[xvi]

Smith cites a passage from a book by John Reeves, who was said to have had access to the Rothschild archives, in which Reeves states that the division of the USA was decided by the Rothschilds at the wedding of Leonara, daughter of Lionel, to her cousin, Alphonse, son of James of Paris, at the family gathering in the City of London, in 1857. British Prime Minister Disraeli is reported to have said that it was here that a plan was devised to divide the USA into two, split between James and Lionel.[xvii]

Be that as it may, Smith jumped to the conclusion that, “Judah P Benjamin was chosen by the Rothschilds to do their work in the United States and he was the first adviser to Jefferson Davis, the President of the Southern Confederacy…”[xviii] The claim is repeated that Czar Alexander knew of the Rothschild plans for the USA and that this was the reason for his dispatching ships to New York and San Francisco harbors. The article concludes with the often-used alleged material from Bismarck. Other articles attempting to relate the Confederacy to Rothschild domination follow the same pattern to the present time.

Judah P. Benjamin: Davis’ “Court Jew”?

As indicated by the several references above, the CSA’s alleged subservience to Rothschild interests centres around Judah P. Benjamin, Confederate Secretary of State, who is called by friend and foe alike the “brains of the Confederacy.”[xix]

Benjamin has been described not only as a “Rothschild agent,” but also as a “Rothschild relative.” Benjamin’s association with Rothschild agencies is said to have started early in his career. The LaRouche-sponsored “Modern History Project,” which sees the conspiratorial apparatus as of Anglo-imperialist[xx] rather than Jewish pedigree, for example, states:

Judah P. Benjamin (1811-84) of the law firm of Slidell, Benjamin and Conrad in Louisiana was a Rothschild agent who became Secretary of State for the Confederacy in 1862. His law partner John Slidell (August Belmont’s[xxi] wife’s uncle) was the Confederate envoy to France. Slidell’s daughter was married to Baron Frederick d’Erlanger in Frankfurt who was related to the Rothschilds and acted on their behalf. Slidell was the representative of the South who borrowed money from the d’Erlangers to finance the Confederacy.[xxii]

The conspiracy theorist Commander William Guy Carr wrote without evidence or references that, “Judah P. Benjamin, a Rothschild relative, was appointed as their professional strategist in America.”[xxiii] There does not appear to be any evidence of, or reason for believing, that Benjamin was a “relative of the Rothschilds.”

The attitude of Rothschild’s actual agent in the USA, August Belmont, who was also National Chairman of the Democratic Party, was, however, avidly and fanatically pro-Union. The attitude of the Rothschilds towards either side was cautious, but Belmont warned that if it were not Rothschild funding that was provided to the North, which Belmont was convinced would win any conflict, the Rothschilds’ rivals would take their place. The bankers who did emerge best from the war were J. and W. Seligman and Company who, “had been the main financial stay of Lincoln’s administration during the war and they reaped the benefits afterward.”[xxiv]

Diplomatic Failures with Europe

While it is generally held by friend and foe alike that the Rothschilds reigned above all in Europe, logic would suggest that Britain, France, and other states heavily influenced by Rothschild lending, would be inclined towards formal support for the Confederacy, if the CSA was a client state of the bankers. This was not the case, despite much being made of supposedly pro-South sentiments among some quarters in England and France.

Despite Benjamin’s efforts, diplomatic recognition by Britain was not forthcoming. Moreover, in 1863 Benjamin closed the CSA mission to England, and evicted the remaining British consular agents from the South.[xxv] This latter expulsion was at the direct instigation of Benjamin when he called a Cabinet meeting while Davis was en route to Tennessee, an action that nonetheless brought prompt agreement from Davis.[xxvi] Efforts to secure French recognition were also unsuccessful. Indeed, in a breach of supposed British neutrality, by 1863 around 75,000 Irishmen had volunteered to fight with the North, as did Germans and other foreign recruits.[xxvii]

Loans Not Forthcoming

As mentioned above, Seligman provided the North with its financial wherewithal, despite the claim that the Union stood against international finance, while the South was in thrall to usury.

The primary claim in regard to the “Rothschild” (sic) funding of the Confederacy is that an important loan was secured from the Erlanger bank in Paris. This financial arrangement was not however favorable to the Confederacy; it was nothing other than a typical money-lending deal that did the South no favors.

Much is made of CSA emissary and Benjamin’s former law partner John Sliddell’s daughter being engaged to Baron Erlanger; and of Slidell’s niece being married to August Belmont, the Rothschild representative to the Northern States.[xxviii] Despite the family connections, the Erlangers showed the Confederacy no support outside of a single usurious business deal. Benjamin personally negotiated the $2.5 million loan with Baron Emile Erlanger when the latter visited Richmond, Virginia. Benjamin hoped that involvement with the banking house of Erlanger and Cie, and with the Erlanger family, who were close friends and advisors to Emperor Louis Napoleon, would secure diplomatic relations with France,[xxix] having failed to make any headway with Britain. The original plan had been for a loan of $25 million to be repaid with bonds and the sale of cotton, with the Erlangers reaping a huge profit from a 23% commission and an additional 8% for handling the bonds.[xxx] Ironically, it was Benjamin who regarded the terms with outrage, as “usury.” Intensive face-to-face negotiations by Benjamin with Erlanger reduced the rate from 8% to 7%. Speculators and investors in Europe bought up the bonds and the Erlangers made a quick profit.[xxxi]

The seminal study on funding and diplomacy during the American Civil War is Jay Sexton’s[xxxii] Debtor Diplomacy.[xxxiii] Sexton does not try to obfuscate the role of international finance in politics. He states that the desire of the American states to gain European capital influenced foreign policy, and that the primary influence was that of Britain, and this influence was particularly evident during the Civil War. “Furthermore, the financial needs of the United States (and the Confederacy) imparted significant political power to an elite group of London-based financiers who became intimately involved in American foreign relations during this period,”[xxxiv] which Sexton describes as: “The unprecedented power of an elite group of international financiers.”[xxxv]

The mid-nineteenth century witnessed the great British-based banking houses reach the pinnacle of their power and influence in American affairs. Led by Baring Brothers, the Rothschilds, and George Peabody and Company (the predecessor to the house of J P Morgan), banks in the City of London were the architects of nearly every facet of the Atlantic economy. In addition to negotiating loans and marketing American securities abroad, banks such as the Barings and Rothschilds underwrote transatlantic trade, provided insurance, exchanged currencies, and compiled influential market reports. During the westward flow of capital across the Atlantic, however, remained the central function of the leasing transatlantic banks. Ninety percent of the United States’ foreign indebtness in 1861 was of British origin.[xxxvi]

The financial and commercial power of these banks “extended to them significant political and diplomatic influence on both sides of the Atlantic,” adds Sexton, and he alludes to the poem “Don Juan” by Lord Bryon, where it is stated that the Barings and the Rothschilds are the “true lords of Europe.” [xxxvii]

In the USA these bankers also exercised considerable influence through the connections of their emissaries; in particular August Belmont, and Thomas Ward and Daniel Webster acting for Barings, in Massachusetts, whom Sexton describes as “highly influential politicians and lobbyists.”[xxxviii] “These transnational banks established a network of high finance and high politics that connected Britain and the United State and merged international finance with international relations.”[xxxix]

Hence, Sexton confirms what so-called “conspiracy theorists” are often scoffed at for by academe and media; that there was—and is—an international elite of bankers who weld political power through their use of money and trade. This is also how another eminent historian, Dr Carroll Quigley of Harvard, described these same international bankers when he wrote that they are, “devoted to secrecy and the secret use of financial influence on political life.”[xl] Quigley described their aim as being:

[T]o form a single financial system on an international scale which manipulated the quantity and flow of money so that they were able to influence, if not control, governments on one side and industries on the other. The men who did this aspired to establish dynasties of international bankers and were at least as successful at this as were many of the dynastic political rulers.[xli]

Amidst the power of the financial elite over much of Europe and the North, the most that can be said for CSA relations with the supposedly pro-Confederate England is that Confederate emissaries secured Enfield rifles from the London Armoury, which also provided arms for the North.[xlii]

The only bank that was sympathetic to the Confederacy was Fraser, Trenholm, and Company, Liverpool, under the directorship of Charles Prioleau, which became the Confederacy’s “unofficial bank.” This hardly amounts to collusion between international finance and the Confederacy, let alone with the Rothschilds. As Sexton observes, “the bank was far from a financial powerhouse by most estimations,” but by 1860 had become a leading cotton importer.[xliii] Charles Prioleau was a South Carolinian, “who had long attempted to free the South from, as he viewed it, the economic hegemony of the North.”[xliv] Hence the motivation of the firm, headed by a Southerner, was not only one of Confederate sympathies but that the primary individual concerned, Prioleau, wanted to assist the South in opposing the plutocratic interests centred in the North. The company was responsible for arranging for the ships that ran the Northern blockade, and its own ships even flew the Confederate Flag. In 1861 CSA President Jefferson Davis authorized the use of the bank as the Confederacy’s depository.[xlv] However, the agency of this relatively modest bank could not compensate for the lack of credit from international finance, and already by 1862 the CSA’s account with Fraser, Trenholm, and Co. was in severe overdraft.

Considering the disruption of the cotton trade to England as the result of war what is remarkable is the lack of support that Britain showed the Confederacy, despite turning a blind eye to the supply of ships from Britain. What the international financiers of The City of London sought by 1862 was a quick diplomatic solution to the war. However, Sexton emphasizes that:

It is important to note that the Rothschilds, whose holdings of Southern states securities were minimal and were only tangentially involved in the cotton trade, did not financially nor politically support the Confederacy. Rothschild records clearly reveal the firm’s disdain for slavery. Nor, despite the myth, did the bank loan money to the Confederacy during the war.[xlvi]

Sexton states in a footnote in regard to the “myth” of Rothschild funding of the Confederacy that there is only one instance when the bank brokered (as distinct from purchased) a sale of Confederate bonds, for only $6,000, on behalf of Joseph Deynood in 1864. “This sole instance pales in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Union bonds that the bank brokered in the same period.”[xlvii]

It was amidst this dire financial situation, denied the financial bloodline of international finance, that the Confederacy resorted to the issue of its equivalent to Lincoln’s Greenbacks, the Graybacks, for which Davis is seldom acknowledged by those who present Lincoln as a champion of banking reform against usury.

Every year, Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe hosts a conference of his Property and Freedom Society at the Hotel Karia Princess in Bodrum, Turkey, which happens to be owned by his wife. Richard was one of the speakers at last year's conference and has written about his experiences there and about Hoppe, his organization, and ideas. Every year Sean Gabb of the U.K.-based Libertarian Alliance diligently films the events of the PFS conference and makes the footage available online. This year was no exception and Sean's video record of the 2011 conference can be viewed here.

I would invite readers of AltRight who are understandably turned off by libertarianism and associate it with globalist, plutocratic, or open borders nonsense to check out the writings of Dr. Hoppe and Dr. Gabb. In the tradition of Nietzsche, Schmitt, or Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Hoppe ranks alonside Alain De Benoist as one of the the fiercest contemporary critics of modern liberal democracy, albeit from a different theoretical premise. I wrote a review of Hoppe's landmark work on the democracy question some years ago which is still available online. Meanwhile, Sean Gabb has emerged as one of the U.K.'s leading critics of Political Correctness and has produced a highly valuable book on the subject which he distributes online for free. It might be said that Sean is for England what Paul Gottfried is for this side of the Atlantic. Suffice to say that Sean Gabb and Hans Hoppe are not your garden-variety U.S.-style libertarians obsessed with conspiracy theories, drugs, and science fiction novels. Indeed, I've always thought that the libertarian movement from outside the United States is of much higher quality than what we Yanks have on our side of the pond, probably due to its smaller size. Quantity often comes at the cost of quality. The Property and Freedom Society and the Libertarian Alliance are the leading lights of non-U.S. based libertarianism and, in my opinion, two of the very best libertarian groups anywhere in the world.

Meanwhile, I would particularly recommend this video of Dr. Gottfried's talk at this year's PFS gathering. What I find personally interesting about Professor Gottfried is that while he originates from the traditional conservative, Buckleyite Right and I came from the Chomskyite Left, we have reached a virtually identical analysis and conclusion concerning the state of our civilization and what the most viable solution to the crisis might be. For those who find Gottfried's speech at PFS interesting, I would also like to suggest this talk given last year by my National-Anarchist colleague Welf Herfurth, a native of Germany who was an activist in German far Right politics in the 1980s and who now resides in Australia. Welf has likewise come to a position not dissimilar to that of Paul Gottfried and myself.

In a video recording of Jamie Kelso’s experience at CPAC, the argument was made that Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics have equal claim to the United States. Disappointingly (at least to me), this is what passes for White conservative opinion on this matter today.

Black activists today defend their equal claim arguing that the United States was built on the backs of Black slaves, implying that the United States would not have been possible without them. Hispanic activists go further, and assert that their claim is greater, arguing that they were in the continent first and that, in fact, Whites should not be in America at all.

Mr. Kelso’s position at the abovemented event was (1) that Whites have the right to a homeland and (2) that Whites in the United States have the right to call that country their homeland because it was built by Whites.

On the surface, the second argument seems a strong one, but in today’s context it is seriously undermined by the present day weakness of the first one.

That I consider the first argument weak nowadays may seem extraordinary to those who consider it irrefutable: after all, Whites did built the United States! Yet as an argument it is weak in the present day context because it not only depends on a false premise, but also relies on the implicit acceptance of a racial self-identification that is rejected by most White people today.

The argument "Whites have the right to a homeland" presupposes that rights have an existence independent of the consensus that is needed to make their enforcement possible.

That consensus does not exist today.

Only some Whites believe in the existence of such a right, and among them only some are willing to act in consequence. That is not a consensus in practical terms: that is a minority view.

The argument also presupposes that Whiteness is accepted as a valid category. Many White people today, however, do not accept that race exists, that the White race is a race, that they are members of a racial group, or that membership of that racial group has any value whatsoever. Many act as if they accept some or all those things, but only so long as there is no risk of being called a name by someone; in a debate, when called on the issue of the validity of their racial identification and interests as Whites, they reject them.

"Whites have the right to a homeland" is the type of argument that is used when preaching to the choir, when high-fiving among ourselves and patting each other on the back; not the type of argument that will sound convincing to a White person with conventional modern views on race.

Such a person does not accept "race", much less "White race" (pride of and identification with which they regard as evil), and therefore finds "White homeland" rather queer, if not outright immoral.

Therefore, in a time when none but a minority of Whites in the United States recognise their exclusive or primary right to the country, and / or when none but an even smaller minority is prepared actively to enforce that right, even where enforcement requires only expressing an opinion without apology or embarrassment, we can conclude that for all practical purposes Whites in the United States today do not have a right to claim the country as a White homeland.

The right may still exist in the abstract, in the minds of an unconventional minority of racially conscious White folk, but that does not make it exist in practice throughout the country today.

The right certainly existed in practice in the past, but that does not make it exist in practice today.

Evidence: tens of millions of Whites persist on voting into, and keeping in, office politicians who openly reject pro-White immigration laws. Even the existing immigration law is poorly or not enforced at all. When a supposedly conservative, politically active White youth is asked whether he cares about his racial heritage or the destruction of his race, he replies, "I don’t give a sh*t". When the question of to whom does the United States belong is posed to another such youth, he asserts in effect that to all peoples of all races, equally. These youths are not exceptional: they are the product of modern mainstream education and media and represent modern conventional opinion.

Of course, it does not have to be that way.

Nor does this mean that I accept the competing claims put forth by other groups.

To my mind, Whites in the United States are the only ones who could legitimately claim the country as their own.

I reject that Blacks have equal claim to the United States because Blacks made up but a small percentage of the historical American nation, and for whatever reasons, the economic output of Blacks on average has been vastly inferior to that of Whites. Indeed, in the contemporary United States Blacks cost more than they produce on the whole—particularly when we consider the cost of violent crime, affirmative action, and welfare recipience, where they are disproportionately represented. As Michael Levin argued in American Renaissance in 2002,

A propos whites’ supposed enjoyment of the un-or undercompensated fruits of black labor, reparationists frequently claim that “blacks built America.” This is patently untrue. At no time have blacks been a substantial part of the US population, and until the Second World War they lived largely in the rural South; they were a part of southern agriculture but played virtually no role in the development of the large cities, industrial complexes, universities and public projects that support American prosperity. In fact, it is precisely those parts of the country with the largest proportion of blacks that have traditionally been the poorest, which is the reverse of what we would expect if blacks were the source of American prosperity. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were English colonies that developed during the same period as the United States. If slavery was the basis of American prosperity, how did these countries achieve comparable levels of prosperity without it? Blacks did not contribute significantly to science, medicine or technology. America would have been different without blacks, but not poorer.

Indeed, it is conceivable that the United States would be even more powerful had there been enough of a consensus to return all of the emancipated Blacks back to Africa upon the abolition of slavery.

Blacks only have an equal (or greater) claim if Whites cease to assert theirs, as they did in Southern Africa.

I also reject that Hispanics (who are mostly mestizo or Amerindian) have a greater claim to the United States than do the Whites. There was no United States in the North American continent before the advent of the White man, and there would be no United States now had the White man not successfully colonised and organised the region in his own image. Had the White man remained oblivious of the existence of the continent we call America, no European-style nation states would exist there today; indeed, small parts of the continent would be controlled by mostly pre-historical tribes, isolated by large swathes of uninhabited space.

The famed Aztlan claim is particularly bogus, as Mexico lost the right to control that area by weakly settling it, by being defeated in war, and by selling that land to the United States.

They only have a greater claim if Whites cease to assert theirs, as did the White Spaniards in a different but more radical way when they interbred with the Amerindian and imported African population.

So much for competing claims.

The point of this article is that if debate-oriented activism is to be successful, it must among other things rely on arguments psychologically compelling to an audience with conventional modern views on race.

I say this not to devalue Mr. Kelso’s efforts, but rather to stress that if those efforts are to be more successful next time, we need to equip him and similar activists with better arguments and debating tactics. The fault is partly with the intellectual echelons of the Right, sections of which hang on to subcultural notions not applicable to the situation as we find it today. “Whites have the right to a homeland” is a archaism, a subcultural platitude, and in practical terms a fallacy where there is no consensus that makes exclusive White rights to anything—even in traditional White homelands—enjoy either moral sanction or the force of law.