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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