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The White Arts Movement
by Kenneth Lloyd Anderson
17 December 2004
[From Instauration October 1996]
The White Arts Movement: A Provisional Manifesto
The arts and humanities today are at least 20 years behind the sciences.
Poets, perhaps even farther behind, not only bypass science; they seem to
hate science.
The ethos of ethnostatism should find its voice in the White Arts Movement.
The best political poetry is created during circumstances of collective
struggle, where poets can say "we" without forcing it and "they" without
being oppressive.
We are not academics, but neither were Chaucer, Shakespeare, Keats, Burns,
Blake, Whitman and Pound. We are the beginning of the long-awaited voice of
our race. Modern poetry, being self-absorbed, has denied the collective
nature of art. Pound was wrong to compose poetry that could only be
understood by poets. Pound's modernism led to artists communicating only
with themselves.
We oppose the obscurity of the modernists. We can even learn from the Beat
poets about communicating with people making the poetry hip, fun and
dangerous, although we are worlds away from their hedonism.
By turning our backs on the academicians, we must understand that today no
one is accepted as a poet without adhering closely to the university
creative writing track. We are outcasts and have no public. But so were the
Beat poets and they managed to create a stir. The great advantage of being
cut out of the creative writing programs is that we can avoid the dead,
flat, conformist poetry mandatory in higher institutions of
learning.
Some backlash to post-modernist mediocrity can be found in the work of the
"New Formalists." Although they oppose hedonistic Leftism, their output so
far reduces to what a few cynics have called an "ethos of Reaganism." This
new formalism, however, has the courage to look at sociobiology and science,
though does not dare approach the proving grounds of race and ethnostates.
The New Formalists are not blind to the problems of modern art, but as yet
they have been limited to propounding the old solutions that have gotten us
nowhere.
Being on our own, we can avoid the difficulty of having to tailor our work
to earn degrees or please the liberals and minorities who control so much of
Western publishing. We don't have to adopt styles acceptable to mainstream
magazines and publishing houses. We are out of the "buddy network." One day
perhaps in our new ethnostate we can establish a tradition, a guild system
of apprentice and mentor, but for now all we can enjoy are the benefits of
independence.
We are not, by any means, ready to reject all of the Imagist innovations nor
are we disposed to accept all of their restrictions. The Modernists began
modern poetry, the first genuine attempt to reform poetry since Elizabethan
times. Free verse is liberating and based on natural speech rhythms. People
seem to like it, provided the subject of the poem is understandable. We see
nothing wrong with using free verse, but it shouldn't entirely replace
standard blank verse and iambic pentameter. We are prepared to accept either
"open" (New American or closed poetry (Traditional European). We believe
that what a poem has to say is more important than how it is said.
Almost all modern poetry has the theme of self-alienation which precludes
our knowing who, what or where we are. The White Arts Movement will change
this. We know who, what and why we are. We are not afraid to be
visionaries and prophets, and we are happy to be social critics. We are also
disposed to stress meaning again -- political, scientific and philosophical
meaning. We are not worried about the forms that convey our meanings,
although we will do our best to avoid crudity.
We think that there should be no restrictions on the kind of language we
use. The Imagists want the language of common speech. That's fine, but we
prefer to include elevated speech. We don't believe we should have to
exclude fill-in words and duller passages in long poems to conform to
modernist notions of concentrated words and images. Narration can often get
along without great lines.
We give ourselves the right to deal in abstract ideas and refuse to restrict
ourselves to concrete images. We will speak of Godhood if we so choose. A
religious vision of the future may be necessary to complete our world view.
But the new religion should be based on science.
We will not forget that poetry is only one part of life. Our race is more
important than writing verse. We totally reject the critical standards of
internationalism, interracialism and liberal humanism. We are outside the
world and the universities, not by choice, but because we are considered to
be pariahs. As such ours is similar to other underground movements.
We dismiss the non-political idea that poetry and art have no material
fallout. Poems can be tools of power. Blacks and other minorities use poetry
and music to express anger, yearnings and pride of race. We, on our part,
are trying to do for our people what Synge and Yeats did for the Irish.
As we work towards separatism, we want to avoid an art of rage and violence.
We don't want our movement wiped out before it gets organized. We prefer
salesmanship to brute force, education to violence. History moves more
slowly than youthful exuberance.
We must not shrink from speaking out against exploitation and criminal
actions by other races, even if in so doing we are labeled "moral monsters."
Ethnostatism is the shape of the future. The White Arts Movement is way
ahead of the pack in promoting it. We are the avant-garde, even though our
opponents like to label us as reactionary or worse. We see our writings as a
blueprint for a new way of life.
When you cannot speak with pride of your own race, when you cannot tell the
truth, why should anyone listen? A large potential audience exists for white
racial poetry, but so far most whites are still in the stage of denial and
fear.
We must accept that we are "for the future," for the next century. We must
be satisfied to be our own publishers and distributors. Although censorship
may increase in America, as it already has in Europe, we have no choice but
to accept the times we are born in. But that doesn't mean we should all roll
over. The poets and artists of the White Arts Movement should remember, the
higher the risks, the higher the eventual rewards.
KENNETH LLOYD ANDERSON
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