‘American Culture?’

We must reject our deculturation.

By guest author Riley Bass of the Sons of Wisconsin.

“Americans have no culture. There is no American culture.”

These words are essential to the dogma of the Disaster. They signal allegiance to the Regime. For most people, this is just a repetition of an assumed fact, drilled into their heads since elementary school and reinforced by the popular “culture.” To say otherwise, to say that there is an American culture, is preposterous — it is inconceivable.

“Why, without immigrants and the blacks, Americans had lacked style, had no class, and knew of no expressive spirit!”

We insist against these narratives, and in doing so, we might be the last torchbearers of a culture and civilization nearly gone out with but a whimper.

What I say here builds upon Renaud Camus’s essays in The Enemy of Disaster¹ and applies his analysis of culture to our American situation. Hopefully this is not reductive or needlessly repetitive of what Camus has to say in his letters.²

One point he makes is that the Great Replacement starts with an alteration of language which erodes culture, a subtle switch in the meaning of terms. In the essay “The Great Deculturation,” he exposes the history of the term culture, that what is really meant by culture is “art, knowledge, literature and belles lettres, the humanities […] savoir-faire, politeness, and the social graces.”³ All has been collapsed into this one word, and this word’s meaning has been subverted from its native sense which was intended to be a catch-all of these interrelated concepts and things.

Melded into this one word, culture now regards all values equal. It has hyper-democratized the values in art, in music, and in architecture. It has reduced language and syntax⁴ to that of the newcomer, the nons, those who are low-cultured or of a culture of a different sort, still bearing the banner and torch of some other civilization. All these diminish that which we know and used to appreciate, and have now taken for granted, as American Culture.

There are no prevalent institutions anymore to propagate the class which participates in the best of what is art, knowledge, philosophy, and literature (referred to as high-culture in some places). No longer do the elite colleges, those Ivy Leagues, even produce what they once did; and I have not seen any man of spontaneous genius rise up for at least 100 years in America. And as the top and best of such culture have been removed from sight, regional customs, dialects, and local myths have all been tossed by the wayside — flattened out into a language, speech, or way of thinking which is lacking in much substance and is quite accommodating to those who have little appreciation or understanding of the American culture, let alone a desire to contribute to our national tapestry. This is not in some direct manner of forming, or reforging, a cohesive, coherent national identity — it is not a positive project, or a conspiracy towards the good (at least in intention). But individuals and institutions are working together to erase all meaning of American and, in our case here, American culture.

Another facet to erasing culture is the shaming and stigma against the customary modes of child-rearing and instruction. The common education was based on the Bible — our first educational law reflects this — and also in The Pilgrim’s Progress, the Hymnaries, and eventually Noah Webster’s Blue Back Speller. These provided a basis upon which culture could be cultivated. Further educated and cultured people would study the classics. Thanks to Gutenberg, people now had access to these in modern translations.

American culture has had a sense of meritocracy to it.⁵ In America, it was customary that people would take initiative and enculturate themselves. This is an aspect of the American people which is shown in the lives of many of our best artists and writers — even outside of culture, America’s great men are, excuse the expression, self-made. Turner is right: the frontier forges Americans — our art, our literature, our thought, is the art of strivers.

But what am I talking about? What is it that I mean by “American culture”? After all, this piece is so titled.

American culture is the story of the Americans — it reaches, anachronistically, to the ancients. America is seeded from the Old Country. Paul Fahrenheidt wrote in another place that we “originate from the British Isles and Continental Europe.” And the Europe of today, Le Gallou says, shares in “the same civilizational narrative: they are the heirs of Greece, Rome, Christianity and the Renaissance.”⁶ The soil of the sea and frontier fed and grew the Americans. But we would not have our home alone. The magnanimous Saxon heart of America opened her arms to those from the Old Country who would tough it out on the frontier and join in her battles.

As time went on and more peoples from the Old Country came over, more anti-lessons had to occur. Unharmonious habits and different customs had to be expelled when they could not be subsumed. Barring the inclusion into American high culture, peoples had to be absorbed into the foundation of American culture. There is a negative aspect to this, but it must happen alongside enculturation. Camus says:

The process [of cultivation] is very unpleasant and always has been. Its essence is nothing other than the necessarily painful effort of conveying to a child or person in general, possibly an adolescent or adult, and this without telling him explicitly, that his parents speak poorly, that they express themselves poorly, that they reason poorly, that they are interested in the wrong kinds of things, or at least that one should not imitate them in one’s speech, self-expression, ways of thinking, and personal interests.⁷

Looking back to these projects of mere assimilation, this is seen as classist, nativist, chauvinistic, and racist. But this is simply what must be done to retain a coherent united identity, a sense of in-groupness. If anyone wished to become American, generally, he had to give up his ways of doing things, his ways of speech, his ways of dress. This is true for any culture. Any culture that wishes to withstand progression (or rather digression) must maintain its stock and seek people who appreciate the accomplishments of those who have gone before and who wish to propagate it, that the few who adopt it from another origin do not alter its essence but enrich it — not to blend and meld continually, but to extend as far as the culture can tolerate human creativity and innovation.

With the turn of a term and decades of advocacy, our culture has been reduced, relegated to dusty shelves underappreciated in libraries and universities, replaced by gay race communism, pornography, and fluff which claims the title of “literature.” Even those adjacent to our aims have reduced elements and artifacts of our culture. Thomas Cole’s masterpieces are devalued into memes such as the “Hard times make strong men” and the “How does this affect you personally?” Stories from Scripture are melded with Marvel on stages rather than revered in pews and from pulpits. Superficial “pop-culture” reigns, and from these footholds, the replacement of a people began with its spirit. The Regime and the Friends of Disaster have cemented their cause, and at every turn, and from a place of power, they legitimize their disdain for their parents and their parents’ culture, as well as their hatred of children.

We must march forward, preserving that fire of civilization. We must reject our deculturation and assert, ever so subtly, our culture.

“But what is American culture? What are you talking about? Is there a living American culture? One that can be seen, one that is heard, one that is felt, one that truly lives?”

It is common to want a simple list,⁸ something to do, or a collection to choose from. (I am tempted to write a more detailed article on the subject, and in fact I have already given⁹ a starter list.) I ask that you think clearly, do some searching, press onward. We must have a persevering spirit and an eternal optimism.

In this debacle, there is only hope for culture à la Beckett [...] a hope against all hope, a pure, desperate will to continue for the sake of continuing, to persevere in one’s being in spite of all reason, because each day gained is an eternity, each victory a negation of the worst, and because the only alternative to this stubborn obstinacy is death.¹⁰

We must enculturate ourselves and our children, and we must support and form institutions which cultivate Americana. We must do as the Congregational settlers did, establishing our own Yales, Harvards, Browns; and as the Baptists did, Hillsdales.

Chin up!

1. Renaud Camus (Trs., Eds. Louis Betty and Ethan Rundell), The Enemy of Disaster: Selected Political Writings of Renaud Camus (Vauban Books, 2023).

2. Stephen Carson also talks on several of the essays contained in The Enemy of Disaster here (YouTube playlist) and here (article).

3. Renaud Camus, “The Great Deculturation.”

4. Reinhard’s Kasteel writes further on this in “Typing English and Writing Dutch.”

5. Paul Fahrenheidt, “Meritocracy,” The Fahrenheidt Family Archives, July 1, 2023.

6. Jean-Yves Le Gallou, quoted in a tweet from Mark W. (@DurhamWASP).

7. Renaud Camus, “The Great Deculturation.”

8. The Hotel Fahrenheidt put forth the Glowing Core of English Canon: the King James Bible, the works of William Shakespeare, and Milton’s Paradise Lost.

9. My starter list can be found here.

10. Renaud Camus, “The Great Deculturation.”