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Southern Nationalist and Identity Dixie founder Padraig Martin, who I interviewed last year, recently published an article which hit close to home for me. In “Devastating Military Recruitment in 2024,” Martin outlines a strategy for doing exactly that, making sure that as few white men — especially Southern white men — join the United States military as possible. His aim, as a dedicated irredentist with plans for the future as long as his memory, is to starve the US military of its primary base of support and to “break a degenerate United States in half, such that a Free and Independent Dixie can arise from the ashes of that former empire.”

This is all well and good. Martin’s essay is as well-researched and thorough, as we have come to expect from him. He ably depicts the US military as a “social justice petri dish” in its dedication to suicidal Leftist norms and pervasive anti-whiteism. This has been going on for decades, and was something President Trump did little — or could only do little — to stop. Martin describes the military’s failing ability to compete with universities for recruits, as well as its pathetic attempts to market itself — all to show how out of touch it is these days with ordinary Americans, especially the young men of Generation Z. This strikingly Right-wing demographic, he points out, was responsible for mercilessly mocking the now-infamous military recruitment ad which featured a young woman from San Francisco with two mothers.

EMMA | THE CALLING | GOARMY

The article is of course excellent and worth reading in full, but here is a taste:

If you look at current recruitment content, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) push has effectively forced White males out of recruiting content. There is almost no representation of young White males in advertisements any longer. Long gone are the Marine Corps videos of “The Few. The Proud. The Marines.” Rather, Marine Corps recruiting attempted to embrace popular terminology of the political Right by appealing to “nation,” while depicting everyone other than Whites as part of that nation. The messaging from the United States military has been crystal clear: we do not want White recruits. Unironically, groups like “Patriot Front” have done a far better job enticing White teenagers to equate patriotism and nation to race versus the military’s ham-fisted attempts at DEI inspired anti-racist/anti-White marketing strategies centering “nation” as a post-White America.

The military’s anti-White shift in advertising may have been justified if the military still had White veterans imploring their White children to join the military. That is no longer happening. Veterans are not only far more conservative as a group (that may change in the future), but they are also statistically more politically engaged then the average American. Consequently, while average American citizens may be less likely to notice the definitively anti-White vitriol of the modern military, White veterans are speaking openly about Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the politically weaponized Covid vaccine to their children. This is all having a suppressing effect on recruitment potential.

Okay, so if the US military is doing a good enough job on its own making itself irrelevant, it shouldn’t be terribly difficult to ease it along further in that direction, right? Martin crunched the numbers and concludes that Southern identitarians, and hopefully the dissident Right in general, should aim its anti-recruitment media blitz at “GenZ White Christian males and GenX veterans.” Memes, videos, and other forms of media should underscore how anti-Christian, anti-white, anti-Southern, and pro-LGBTQ the military has become. Because this is all demonstrably true, creating content in which the US military effectively discredits itself should not be terribly difficult. The former demographic should be dissuaded from joining up and the latter should be dissuaded from encouraging their GenZ children from joining up. It is not about honor and patriotism anymore; that US military is long gone. Military recruitment is now about feeding the Beast that hates you, and may ultimately wish to destroy you.

This is where Padraig Martin doesn’t so much go wrong as leaves a few loose ends in his argument. This essay is not a critical response, but a complement to his. Yes, the US military is everything he says it is. Yes, it makes perfect sense for young men to have nothing to do with it. But to completely abandon it as he is suggesting would be dangerous. In 20 years, after all the Generation X military men retire, and if there hasn’t been a shift in the country’s political direction, we may very well have a White House and federal legislature with unambiguous ties to antifa. What would happen if such a Bolshevik leadership decided to sic its mostly non-white military on white America itself? How would our AR-15s, Glocks, and hunting rifles do against weaponized AI, long-range missile strikes, and God knows what else when all the fingers on the proverbial buttons are black or brown? That, I have to say, is a scary proposition, and it would be precipitated by thousands of would-be white recruits opting out of the military today.

According to this popular WhatIfalthist video, the Right would most likely emerge victorious in a second civil war. This all depends, however, on the US military being mostly Right-wing to begin with. That may be so today (although even this is questionable). But if Padraig Martin has his way, tomorrow it won’t be so. And even in its denuded state, without a core cadre of dedicated, patriotic white men, the military, with its vast technological resources and potential aid from abroad, could conceivably conquer or subdue a white American populace whose military-aged men are largely untrained.

Who Will Win America’s Next Civil War?

Of course, this is the worst-case scenario. It is also probably far from the likeliest scenario. But it is certainly possible and should be considered if we are to take Identity Dixie’s proposals seriously. I am not saying Martin is wrong, but I will say that ending the flow of white men into the US military cannot end there. Other things have to happen concomitantly in order for Martin’s dream of breaking up the degenerate United States to come true.

First, there must be something set up to replace the military and the technological training that is offered by the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. It also has to be done legally and peacefully. Certainly, individuals with the appropriate means can find ways of doing so, but serious capital and resources would be necessary for thousands of young men to learn the necessary skills. Do we have that? And where would we begin? A white America that spurns the military must be prepared for what it’s got coming in the mid-twenty-first century, and I am not exactly sure what that is or how it can be done. This conversation certainly needs to continue in many places beyond this one.

(As an aside, my latest novel, The No College Club, addresses the topic of large-scale white abandonment of traditionally white institutions, although from an educational standpoint, as its title suggests. But it hints at military divestment as well.)

Second, the dissident Right will have to behave itself. Given the grievously unjust sentences that have been handed down to the January 6 protestors and the Left-wing establishment’s typically oppressive overreaction to any strong public expression by the Right — Charlottesville in August 2017 being the prime example — we are one Timothy McVeigh away from total crackdown, and I’m not referring only to doxings and cancellations. If the Justice Department can rationalize sentencing the Proud Boys leadership to decades behind bars while arguing for leniency for Black Lives Matter protestors when they have committed murder, then imagine what they would do to perfectly innocent white advocates if they’re in an aggressive mood? Trumped-up charges, forced incarcerations, a complete blackout of Right-wing media — March 1917 all over again.

In such a future, I believe the white population of the US would need sympathetic leadership in the military as a protection against tyranny. Without that, avoiding such a future hinges on some Right-wing lunatic not committing a large-scale atrocity in the name of the white race. So far we’ve thankfully managed to do just that, with the violence being limited to isolated, lone-wolf affairs that are promptly and correctly denounced by dissident Right influencers. I know that people in our circles today can be very critical of each other, but in the vast majority of cases we have been a law-abiding, peaceful cohort, especially when compared to our Left-wing counterparts.

In order for Padraig Martin’s plan to work, it must remain this way.

This message has to be drummed into the movement from the top down, especially by those such as myself and Padraig Martin, who believe that white men should indeed turn their backs on the US military. Once we cede military power to our potential adversaries, all we will have left at our disposal are peaceful means to alter the course of history. We won’t have any room for mistakes.

Finally, we need to invest fully in Red State Secession. When I interviewed Martin, he said that he was fine with Red State Secession as a temporary measure. I am, too, as evidenced by my ISEE Model of White Survival:

Temporary as it is, however, Red State Secession is also necessary, and the only viable first step short of bloody revolution which will accomplish our goal of the breakup of the United States and the subsequent establishment of a white ethnostate, in the South or elsewhere. This means that white military divestment and Red State Secession need to go hand-in-hand. We shouldn’t ever mention one without the other unless we wish to remain vulnerable to whatever military with a non-white majority has in store for us. And we don’t have a whole lot of time.

Another option would be to attempt to secretly infiltrate the military with pro-white recruits who will give American whites the protection they will need if the American leadership decides to tyrannize us. But when it comes to this strategy, the less we know about it, the better.

See also US military veteran Ash Donaldson’s essay “Be All You Can Be: On Joining the Military,” which presents the pros and cons of white men joining the US military.

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