Future generations will look back on 2020 as a pivotal moment in the history of the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic, a contentious and arguably fraudulent presidential election, and Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots all took place during this eventful year. In his recent book, The Year America Died, Greg Johnson makes the argument that America essentially ceased to exist in 2020. Far from being pessimistic, the book argues that these crises offer an opening for dissidents and pro-white activism.
The Year America Died is actually a collection of essays that appeared on Counter Currents , a leading Dissident Right website that Johnson edits, from 2019 to early 2021. Counter Currents has done an invaluable job resurrecting various anti-liberal writers, artists and philosophers who have been memory-holed. The site is also developing a new generation of dissident writers who also have a very clear view of immigration and demographics. While immigration is not a main topic of The Year America Died, every major issue discussed in it has been impacted by America’s immigration disaster.
The first crisis discussed in the book is COVID-19. Johnson notes that the pandemic itself is an argument for nationalism and closed borders:
COVID-19 presents national populists with remarkable metapolitical and political opportunities. So much so, that I have taken to calling it the “globalvirus.” The globalvirus demonstrates that global capitalism, open borders, liberal individualism, multiculturalism, xenophilia and democracy make nations more vulnerable to deadly pandemics. The countries with protectionist economies, real borders, a commitment to the common good, ethnic homogeneity, healthy xenophobia and more “authoritarian” regimes are less vulnerable.
Johnson points out that immediate travel restrictions and screening all people coming from overseas would have been the right course of action at the start of the pandemic. Though writing in April 2021, Johnson’s argument then is what many are moving toward nearly a year later. Namely, that COVID may be something we just have to live with. Many people die in car accidents each year, but we do not ban cars.
The second crisis discussed in The Year America Died provides the strongest and most important section. It deals with the BLM riots that targeted whites and caused billions in damages in the summer of 2020.
Johnson notes that BLM is based on lies. Supposed black victims such as Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and George Floyd had attacked people or were fighting with police when they were shot in self-defense or—in the case of Floyd—died of a drug overdose. Another BLM lie is that cops are targeting blacks. Johnson cites FBI reports showing blacks are only a quarter of the people killed by police officers yet more than 40 percent of cop killers. Who is targeting whom?
Black and Leftist attacks on police are responsible for de-policing and a related rise in crime—particularly murder. Blacks, 13 percent of the population, were an astounding 56 percent of murder suspects in 2019. Whites, of course, have long been targeted by blacks for violent crime and BLM propaganda only enables this. But there are other white victims of BLM, including those who defend themselves against black attackers.
In my view perhaps the best essay in the book is “Verdict On America.” It was written in the aftermath of the Derek Chauvin trial. Johnson notes that Chauvin was a good Minneapolis cop who was simply doing his duty when called to the scene of a crime in May 2020. George Floyd, however, was a walking stereotype, “overdosing on multiple drugs, passing counterfeit currency and prancing about with a banana in his hand.”
Of course, there was zero evidence that race had anything at all to do with the case. But the Regime Media and entire Establishment painted Chauvin as a racist, denying him any chance of a fair trial. The trial that did take place was a travesty and Chauvin now could spend the rest of his life in prison. “Derek Chauvin was convicted because of the threat of massive BLM and antifa violence if he were acquitted,” notes Johnson.
The Chauvin verdict and the complete embrace of BLM lies by the U.S. Ruling Class has caused crime—particularly murder—to spiral out of control. Many cities such as San Francisco now do not arrest people for crimes such as shoplifting since almost all the shoplifters are black. This has had an effect on everyone, including blacks.
According to newly released CDC data, homicide deaths among African Americans were 53% higher during the George Floyd Era of June-December 2020 vs. the same months during the average of 2018 and 2019.
— Steve Sailer (@Steve_Sailer) January 19, 2022
White homicide deaths were up 21% and Asian only 1%.https://t.co/QjFbSjvpeo pic.twitter.com/GLmu8Pe6rb
Johnson gives some good advice for whites targeted by BLM.
What should white normies do? Batten down, because a great wave of chaos is coming, and your skin will be your uniform. You may not want colored people as your enemies, but sometimes your enemies choose you. Your head may be overflowing with white guilt and good intentions, but the only thing the mob will see is the color of your skin. Your fake Woke virtues will not save you.
He offers a three-part strategy for racially aware whites:
First, take sensible precautions to secure your personal safety and the safety of your loved ones, but be warned that even violence in self-defense will be prosecuted.
Second, don’t call for violence or engage in it. Even as blacks and communists are trashing America, the establishment is looking for white racists to blame. Don’t play along with them.
Third, use this as an opportunity to educate. … This entire farce is built on lies and enabled by viciousness and cowardice. It is a crushing indictment of multiculturalism, the liberals who promote it and the conservative cowards who enable them.
Johnson ends this essay with a commonsense solution being discussed more openly than at any time before—a racial divorce. America’s legacy black population is big enough, with the black immigrant population expected to double in the US by 2060. Divorce may be the only way for whites to escape BLM-inspired racial terrorism, which is now a daily reality for them [Ryan Rogers murder: Documents suggest racial motive in teen’s Palm Beach Gardens stabbing, by Michael Ruiz, Fox News, December 10, 2021].
Johnson’s section on the 2020 presidential election begins with a discussion of President Trump. The author acknowledges that Trump was a disappointment but notes that he did at least slow down immigration and white displacement. He would certainly have been better for the Historic American Nation than Joe Biden. Surprisingly, there are few details about the actual stolen election charges other than some examples of how easy it is to perpetrate voter fraud. A chapter in The Year America Died is titled, “Is America a Banana Republic Now?” The answer would appear to be yes, as fewer and fewer people now trust elections—the very basis of “American democracy” that Leftists and neocons pretend to care so much about.
With Democrats importing a new electorate through immigration, elections may soon be a formality in any event.
To my mind, the importance of the stolen election accusations are not so much the actual charges. Rather, they are simply one more thing that adds to what the late Sam Francis described as a “crisis of legitimacy, or a period in which the subjects of a regime no longer believe in the claims of a regime to be legitimate.”
The combined impact of COVID hysteria, doubts about the validity of elections and BLM/Antifa terrorism could well hasten the death of the U.S. polity. The Historic American Nation—still the majority in the U.S.—simply does not trust the Ruling Class anymore. And with good reason. Recently, I came across a Gab post that nicely encapsulated this:
"The Collapse of Complex Civilizations" 📙 by Dr. Joseph Tainter concludes that societies collapse when a critical mass of participants no longer receive a net benefit from participation in that society.
Often times wars or natural disasters serve as the catalyst for the collapse of an already corrupt society because the event forces a majority of Normies to realize the effort of rebuilding is not worth the benefits derived from that repaired society. The war or disaster is merely the catalyst.
Conversely if a people value a society, it will be rebuilt, even if almost entirely destroyed. (See Irish, Japanese, and more broadly European revival.)
Subsequently of course, the Regime appears to be trying to stampede us into war over Ukraine.
While Trump losing to Biden in 2020 was a blow, Johnson believes that it is also is an opportunity. In “Goodbye, Mr. Trump,” he lays out a well-thought-out agenda for dissidents and identitarians to pursue under the Biden regime. This includes making the moral case for white identity politics and race realism, eschewing violent confrontation given that the justice system is stacked against us, building alternative platforms and increasing our base of support.
In the subsequent 13 months since these words were written, the Dissident Right has been doing just that. According to recent polls, 85 percent of Republicans are concerned about anti-white discrimination and nearly a quarter of Republican men have a favorable view of white nationalism. A poll for American Renaissance found that that 26 percent of white Americans are racial conservatives. Meanwhile, alternative social media platforms such as Gab are booming.
Perhaps Johnson is correct. The current America may well be dead for us. But that does not mean we cannot build a new nation, either through some sort of separation or by taking and using state power to recreate a nation our ancestors would once again recognize.
Peter Bradley [Email him] writes from Washington D.C.
