Review: 2023 American Renaissance Conference

The 2023 American Renaissance conference was the fourth Amren conference (2010, 2014, 2022 and 2023) that I have attended. This was the first time that I have attended two consecutive conferences. It was the third time that I have been to the conference at Montgomery Bell State Park.

As many people who were there noticed, I was feeling uninspired during the first half of the year. I felt like I had already said everything I have to say. I felt like news and politics was getting monotonous. How many mass shootings and race riots can you cover before they blur together? How many self-detonating vanguardists have we seen lash out in frustration over the years? How many personality cults have we seen rise and fall apart in the movement? How many times have you seen the GOP squander a political victory? Is there anything exciting to report about Donald Trump vs. Ron DeSanctimonious?

I was bored.

I wasn’t feeling it.

After twenty two years in this space, I have pretty much seen it all now. I needed a break from my routine to reflect and snap out of this funk. I now feel like I have turned a corner.

In a lot of ways, I could fit the 2023 American Renaissance conference into this pattern. The conference was held in the same park in Tennessee. I went and saw lots of old friends, met some friends for the first time in real life and made new friends. It was good to see everybody again. I always enjoy meeting up with people at least once a year who have been traveling the same road for years or even decades. We had fun drinking and socializing again. The same small pathetic group of Nashville Antifa showed up and briefly made a little noise. It struck me as a token gesture of resistance. They seem to be getting bored with it. We ate the same steak dinner. We listened to speeches by many of the same people who have spoken in previous years. As usual, there wasn’t enough time to speak to everyone who I needed to talk to. If you have ever attended an Amren conference, I am sure you would have found this conference very familiar. I will be following up on some things with several people who I saw at the conference.

Ricardo Duchense spoke at length about the history of liberalism and the need for a Fourth Political Theory. Keith Woods spoke about how liberalism has rapidly transformed Ireland. Stephen McNallen spoke about how he sees the spirit of Wotan awakening in Weimerica. Ruuben Kaalep of Estonia and Dries Van Langenhove of Belgium gave rousing nationalist speeches. James Edwards gave a speech about why he is optimistic about our future much of which he attributed to this website. Gregory Hood spoke about the corruption of the PMC and why they never solve problems. Sam Dickson gave a surprisingly optimistic speech about why our current system which is based on a systematic denial of reality is doomed to fail. Jared Taylor spoke about his experiences over the course of thirty years as a White advocate.

As always, the speeches and the conversations with attendees was thought provoking. The highlight of this conference was meeting my friend Keith Woods who is visiting America for the first time. It was also good to see Thomas777 again who I have known since my days at The Phora in the early 2000s. I would like to give a shout out to another attendee who bought me a beer for identifying a mutual nemesis.

Last year, I remember we drank a few beers with Steve King at Amren. Joe Biden had recently given the Dark Brandon speech in which he denounced a third of the country as “semi-fascists” who were enemies of Our Democracy. The 2022 midterms were another “Battle for the Soul of America.” Democracy itself was on the ballot. The Democrats declared victory after performing much better than expected in the midterms while the Republicans eeked out a narrow of victory in the House of Representatives. Donald Trump announced the 2024 Revenge Tour shortly before the last Amren conference.

Less than nine months later, Donald Trump has been indicted and arrested three times and faces over 450 years in prison. The political rhetoric was hot in 2022, but it has gone nuclear in 2023. The last presidential election cycle in 2020 was nuts and the stakes are even higher this time around with the outbreak of war in Europe and the weaponization of the Justice Department. The political crisis that began when Trump won the 2016 election is intensifying. The worst of it is undoubtedly yet to come.

Do you know what I was thinking at the 2023 Amren conference? This might be the last time for a long time that I get to go to a conference and see all of these old friends. This might be the last summer for a long time that it is safe to go out and see a movie with my wife. We all remember how 2020 went and 2024 appears to be shaping up to be worse than that. When you look at it that way, you realize that you are taking a lot of things for granted. You gain a new appreciation for normalcy.

Our Democracy prevailed in 2020 and 2022 and spared us from having to face a range of extremely negative scenarios, but perhaps its luck runs out in 2024 as millions of people are ready to vote for Trump to own the establishment again. Maybe Donald Trump is elected president again from prison or the Supreme Court intervenes and lets him out or the system buckles under the weight of incarcerating a leading presidential candidate of a major party in the middle of a presidential election cycle. It is conceivable that a majority of voters could vote against Democracy next year.

Jared Taylor announced the next Amren conference is happening next November after the 2024 presidential election. I hope to see you there. I am sure we will have a lot talk about. That’s assuming we make it through next year without the establishment unleashing all of their violent minions again to deter people from voting for Trump, or worse, after they do so and he wins.