The Friend-Enemy Distinction, Part 2 of 3: The Right (and Wrong) Test
Given the disparate personalities on the Right, in order to cooperate, we must focus on common principles and goals.
In the previous essay of this series, I argued that the key to applying the strategy of “no enemies on/to the right” (NEOTR/NETTR) is a proper understanding of the friend-enemy distinction, which starts with believing our enemies—that is, allowing people to discredit themselves by the evidence of their own statements. Individuals like Costin Alamariu/Bronze Age Pervert and Captive Dreamer, and the larger online sphere that they are part of (including X accounts like Zero HP Lovecraft, Second City Bureaucrat, Alaric the Barbarian, and more), center their principles not around what is fundamentally Christian and pro-White, but what can be shoehorned into benefiting Israel and the Jewish people. Despite the fact that they use nationalist rhetoric and have plenty of statements which, in isolation, are inoffensive, when push comes to shove they line up in defense of Israel, against Christian morality, and against a consistent White political consciousness. Therefore, the idea of “no enemies on the right” does not apply to them; in fact, they should be correctly identified as enemies of Christian Nationalism.
This implies that we have a definition of “the Right” which excludes some people who present as such. You can think of this as a “test” which individuals or organizations must pass. It is important to keep in mind that this is specifically for those who present as on the Right. It makes no sense to ask whether NEOTR applies or not to an actor who is not Rightist in the first place. You do not need to test whether the SPLC or Kamala Harris are on our side. You do need to test people like Bronze Age Pervert, Peter Thiel, or J. D. Vance. With those outside the Right, there is a fundamentally different logic of operation, which I will expand on somewhat in the third part of this series.
However, the test must be correctly formulated to serve this purpose. I will illustrate by using a negative example, of an incorrect test. This, I will argue, is Donald Trump.
A Nationalist Critique of Donald Trump
The 2015-16 election period was very significant for my political development, as was the case for a large proportion of the American Right today. Trump’s candidacy for me was an introduction into nationalism as a political philosophy, and into its standard-bearer movement, the Alt Right (which I use interchangeably with White Nationalism in relation to a discrete American political scene, as described in my previous series). While Trump did not create pro-White radicalism, he benefited from it, and for a time, the relationship seemed mutually beneficial.
What distinguished Trump’s 2016 candidacy from the status quo of Republican politics were, most importantly, four issues: immigration restriction, economic protectionism, antagonism to the political and economic elite, and an anti-war foreign policy. Because of these, Trumpism appeared to be a genuinely nationalist platform which aligned moral principles with tangible goals, premised on a recognition of the fundamental failure not of a single party or individual, but of the whole political-economic system. Trump’s initial selling point was not his contrast with Hillary Clinton, but with the Republican Party, and the popularity of his attacks thereon represented the breakthrough and brief crystallization of grassroots political consciousness which recognized the entire system of power in America as a single entity which was demonstrably responsible for our national decline. It is easy to see how this conflict, which was framed as “nationalism versus globalism,” was only a step away from the further revelation of Jewish power in the United States. This thin curtain disappeared entirely when it came specifically to the issues of immigration and foreign policy. Thus, this was a time when many people, such as myself, awoke to the Jewish Question, though not through Trump himself, but the base of radical activists of the Alt Right who were, in my view, unambiguously responsible for his campaign’s success in 2016, as they formed his most energetic on-the-ground activists and online meme warriors.
When Trump was elected, therefore, the most enthusiastic parts of his base expected certain things. Indeed, we expected him to deliver on the core elements of his platform all the more because we understood their relationship to more fundamental conflicts. Immigration wasn’t just about a secure border or enforcing the law; it was fundamentally about undoing White demographic decline. An “America First” foreign policy wasn’t just about whether or not a foreign war could be justified with sufficient domestic support; it was about retaking American sovereignty from Jewish control.
As I stated in the previous essay of this series, the turning point for me personally was the 2017 airstrikes on Syria, which had no justifiable interest from an American nationalist perspective, and instead indicated a disturbing continuity with the decades of Jewish-engineered neoconservative foreign policy which Trump had been elected to end. The Alt Right had already reached the conclusion that not only did America have no interest in war-mongering in Syria, but that our interest would be better served by allowing Assad to reinstate order; that the only credible explanation for US foreign policy in the region was the Israel lobby; and that America’s support of ISIS and Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria was indefensible and a justification for democratic war against the political class by nationalist populists, for which purpose Trump had been elected. In this light, it should be easier to understand the significance of Trump’s action, as it signaled that he was willing to act on Israel’s behalf and entirely outside both the material interest of the American people, and nationalist principle.
In hindsight, it is my view that this event did accurately portend the rest of Trump’s governance throughout both terms, which has been, at best, a complete failure to depart from the Republican status quo, and at worst, an anti-White, accelerationist presidency for Israel. Trump’s deportation numbers have always been underwhelming, and centered around high-publicity stunts rather than effective policy changes. His attacks on DEI have not significantly improved conditions for Whites, but rather focused on cracking down on criticism of Jews and Zionism, especially after October 7, 2023. He has consistently defended legal immigration, and even insulted American workers by saying they are not talented enough and need to be replaced with H1-B visa-holders, and gaslit and betrayed his base with his endorsements of anti-White Republicans like Vivek Ramaswamy. Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has bragged about speeding up naturalization, and the administration’s immigration restrictions seem more aimed at punishing criticism of Israel than preventing White demographic replacement. He has left White political prisoners like Derek Chauvin and the McMichaels to languish in the anti-White prison system, while pardoning or commuting the sentences of Jewish criminals like Sholom Rubashkin (convicted of fraud and also cited for animal cruelty, hiring illegal immigrants, and child labor), Aviem Sella (an Israeli military officer indicted for recruiting Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard to collect US military secrets), Eliyahu Weinstein (who was sent back to prison for a new fraud conviction in 2024 after Trump commuted his previous sentence), and more. Jeffrey Epstein “committed suicide” during his first term, and his second has been marked by his insistence that the Epstein case is a partisan, Democrat hoax. From the Middle East to Ukraine, he has escalated conflicts rather than negotiated their conclusion or an American exit. He came into office in 2025 with a ceasefire in Gaza, and immediately encouraged Israel to break it and continue the genocide of the Palestinians.
It is a well-known phenomenon that after his first term, Trump’s electoral coalition underwent a replacement of a portion of his previous nationalist base with converted “Never-Trumpers” and other previously fierce opponents who had discovered that their fears about the radicalism of his governance had been unfounded, and that in fact he supported their stances on economics, immigration, and foreign policy to such an extent as to be the preferable option. Some examples of this are Ben Shapiro, Glenn Beck, Lindsay Graham, Erick Erickson, Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio, and J. D. Vance. To me, this indicates the final sign of the defeat of nationalist-populist hopes for a political revolution and the victory of the Jewish system over the Alt Right in electoral politics.
The last objection, which I will briefly cite for the purpose of fully fleshing out my position for the reader’s understanding, is that whatever problems Trump may have, he is still better than a Democrat. This I view as a complete defeat of the ideal that defined Trump’s success in 2016. The Alt Right, once again, was responsible for the popularization of the idea of conservatives as controlled opposition, merely pushing the brakes in order to consolidate what gains liberals had made a decade ago. The Republican Party was correctly identified as a primary contributor to the decline of the United States and the White race’s home therein, and in Trump, people including myself were briefly willing to throw aside every other concern in order to break the system’s control over the electorate. This was the only time in my memory in which the argument that “a Democrat would be worse” as a final measure was thrown aside, and if that had not been the case, the Trump phenomenon as we know it would not have taken place. Electoral politics is not an empowerment but a control mechanism, and the inability to take punches in the short term in exchange for a better situation in the long term (what is sometimes pejoratively and largely incorrectly called “accelerationism”) is, in my view, a psychological weakness in any political cause which has the potential to be fatal. I will return to this point in the last essay.
The Right Test
I recognize that not every reader may agree with this argument. My primary purpose is to establish that there is enough baggage to Donald Trump and his record in office that makes him unsuitable as a test for the friend-enemy distinction. It should be clear why this is the case: doing so would put one in the position of defending people like Ben Shapiro and Peter Thiel, and attacking others who have substantively contributed to the growth of White political consciousness because they view themselves as betrayed by Trump. Doing so may even put one in the position of defending Israel or Jeffrey Epstein, and attacking the Palestinians or Epstein’s White victims.
What needs to be acknowledged, therefore, is that at the very least, reasonable people can disagree, and must be able to do so without breaking a political coalition. If one’s test of loyalty is Donald Trump, then one is simply a Republican, and while that’s certainly a choice you can make, it is counterproductive to make it identical with being a Christian Nationalist. Christian Nationalism must be a set of principles independent of any individual personality in order for it to be effective as a means of directing politics, rather than being directed. It has to stand apart in order for it to be something for politicians to appeal to, and as Christian Nationalists we should demand that this take the form of concrete actions which tangibly return national sovereignty to White Christians and away from Jews, or prevent Jews from persecuting Whites and Christians. Lastly, it must be unwavering in its goals, or else it will end up being bought and sold.
The right test must be a matter of principles, not personality. These must be the principles of Christian Nationalism. Even on this, there may be some divergence, which in my opinion is tolerable so long as it does not prevent cooperation. As I said in the last essay, I wrote my “Open Letter” series partly as a compass to set out the core principles that should define Christian Nationalism in order for it to be an appropriate and effective response to the evils of our day. Those principles are: commitment to Godly personal character; practicing the strategy of “no enemies on the Right”; a rightly ordered racial consciousness as White Christians; opposition to the Jews and support for Palestine; and forethought for future tests. Others have defined core principles in other ways, such as Joel Webbon’s discussion of the four pillars: Christianity, patriarchy, anti-Zionism, and race realism. To me, while such a formulation isn’t identical, it is compatible, and I would be happy working under it in a practical context.
The argument I’ve made here applies just as much to any other public figure: J. D. Vance, Nick Fuentes, any Christian Nationalist, etc. What I want to achieve through this is making it easier for people to cooperate despite their disagreements about these people, by focusing on common principles and corresponding tangible goals. It is natural for political personalities to have their own support bases and fiefdoms, and I think that not only is trying to change this fact a losing battle, but there are also serious problems with doing so, as it would fundamentally be an attack on the principle of leadership. However, this also makes it easier for our enemies to practice divide-and-conquer, and for people who share compatible visions to spend more time fighting each other than our enemies. There will always be criticisms to be made of any political personality and differences of opinion on strategy; therefore, these should, whenever possible, take a secondary place to working in material ways toward common goals defined by the principles of Christian Nationalism.
ATTENTION READER:
Institutional trust is at record lows. But without institutions, we cannot renew our people, much less provide an inheritance to posterity. In response to this crisis and as an organic outgrowth both of necessity and natural interest, American Mantle exists. And so we make our appeal.
