[National Socialist critic] Keith Woods advocates weakness, compromise, and intellectual dishonesty.
Keith Woods’ arguments ultimately boil down to a defense of half-measures and ideological timidity, dressed up as pragmatic strategy. His primary concern—that National Socialism carries negative stigma—is nothing more than a fearful retreat into weakness and respectability politics. Rather than standing firmly behind a rigorous, comprehensive, and proven life-affirming ideology, Woods prefers a sanitized nationalism designed to placate enemies who despise our existence regardless.
Nationalism without National Socialism is precisely the half-measure that has repeatedly failed European peoples. It offers neither structural solutions nor ideological coherence. Woods’ belief that the essence of National Socialism—its fundamental commitment to racial health, cultural vitality, economic independence, and disciplined self-overcoming—can be stripped away, leaving behind a vague ethnonationalist shell, is intellectually bankrupt. Such hollow nationalism can never provide the depth of purpose, moral clarity, or strategic vision essential for genuine rebirth and sustained revival.
Woods deliberately misconstrains the complexity of historical events, lazily parroting mainstream tropes without rigorous engagement with primary sources. He misrepresents the nature of Lebensraum, dismisses Slavic collaboration, and leans heavily on mistranslated excerpts from Hitler’s Table Talk. The reality is clear: the table talks—recorded firsthand in German by Picker and Heim—are authentic records, distorted only through English translations. To entirely dismiss them, as Woods does, is intellectually negligent and betrays a lack of scholarly integrity.
Woods’ rejection of National Socialism reveals more than historical ignorance—it exposes his philosophical cowardice. His ideological stance resembles National Bolshevism, a confused hybrid that tries and fails to reconcile nationalism with leftist economic populism, inevitably resulting in ideological paralysis. Woods advocates a path of least resistance, endorsing a nationalism devoid of moral clarity or revolutionary intent. He proposes nothing concrete beyond vague appeals to national tradition, conveniently sidestepping the urgent structural crises—demographic collapse, cultural degeneration, economic subjugation—that demand radical solutions.
In short, Woods represents precisely what must be eradicated from nationalism: timidity, compromise, and a preoccupation with optics. He prioritizes popular acceptance over ideological integrity, fundamentally misunderstanding the reality that true nationalism requires sacrifice, struggle, and unwavering adherence to principles that sustain and elevate life.
The Life Affirming Principle dictates clear solutions: nationalism must be bold, disciplined, and uncompromising. It cannot thrive through half-hearted populism or sanitized historical revisionism. National Socialism is more than Adolf Hitler or the Third Reich; it is a timeless truth, discovered rather than invented [emphasis by Editor]: a guiding philosophy for cultural, biological, and economic health. To reject it is to reject the only fully coherent system capable of achieving lasting strength and survival for our people.
Ultimately, Woods embodies a defeatist mindset. He would rather pursue polite nationalism, begging permission to exist, instead of forging an uncompromising path toward genuine national renewal. His approach offers neither hope nor solutions, only endless retreat. To embrace Woods’ path is to embrace perpetual defeat.
10 replies on “Timidity”
Also, listen to Joel Davis debate Greg Johnson on the Wood issue.
The problem is that even Davis doesn’t want to recognise that the Slavs, in general, are more mixed than the Nordics (due to the Mongol and Tartar invasions).
But it is positive to see that at about 1:45 Joel disagrees with Johnson because of the latter’s Christian ethics (although Joel doesn’t call them that).
As far as I can see the underling problems these White Nationalists have with National Socialism, outside of historical strategic quibbles (which I tire of very quickly) is that just as they have difficulty recognising the (overall) subhuman quality of Slavs (there’s an SS Publications booklet titled The Subhuman which I refer to here) they have similar difficulty accepting ‘German chauvinism’, despite the superior quality of the German genius (also a thick book by Peter Watson, highlighting their impressive steady contributions, despite a biased chapter on scholarship the Third Reich). Just as one example, they have won more Nobel Prizes than any other nation, Britain and America put together. Germany both is of Europe and speaks for all of Europe. Perhaps the problem is that the WN movement is on the whole American (and does not read this sort of literature), and that they are still thinking in terms of their nations, all in a forced equivalence line, and not the quality of the racial bodies, which after all determine the quality of any society. The envy is palpable.
I see comments along the lines of ‘needlessly provocative’: to who? Just who are they worried about upsetting? Their enemies already despise them. Perhaps they simply don’t want to fall out with friends and family, or lose their jobs, and are thus merely crypto-nationalists, or indeed cowards. If so, they should know that, alone, the piling up of private material wealth cannot avert our existential threat.
It’s refreshing to see so many commentators defend Adolf Hitler, but as for the site owners themselves, and the leaders and spokesmen, it seems they are all of this breed of timewasting, bourgeois gatekeepers, more content with bohemianism and liberal values than with forging a revolutionary mindset.
As I said before, I shall only hope they fade by becoming increasingly irrelevant to the times, with their empty ‘nationalism’ of compromise and pretentious intellectualism. They are the prime body, to me at least, in the way of staging any form of serious white pushback, continuing to drip addictive poison into the eyes of their many readers or otherwise tying them up in miles of impotent chat. Why are they still discussing (on Unz) who killed Kennedy, for example? How long will these sites continue for, making no progress, just more and more of the same febrile content? Old, boring men. No wonder we cannot mobilise. I don’t know why so many continue to post there, at these three main sites. It’s like a village coffee morning or an adolescent social club, a dopamine hit equivalent to Facebook. I think I’ll just have to grit my teeth for the time being, as you recommend to me, and wait for them to embarrass themselves further with their subversive traitor squeamishness, as the real dark closes in.
Well said. And by the way, if you want to quote what you just told me by email, the paragraph that starts ‘It occurred to me…’, be my guest.
Thank you. Here we are:
It occurred to me later that what got me the most with Greg and co. wasn’t simply the egalitarianism, or the looking good to pals, it was the acquiescence to the liberal world order, and looking good on the world stage, as if other nations would somehow respect us more for this cuckoldry. In reality, who cares what they think, at all? I’m a believer in power over ‘rights’. That’s what puts me off the remigration campaign they’re impotently recommending currently, which just feels like kicking the can down the road, especially given some countries’ population explosions. Why not invade other countries, why not war, why not genocide, and conquest? Fundamentally I sense there’s no getting through to Greg on this. He would be horrified. All his condescending ‘no, that’s not it, no, no’ comments to Joel had that pedagogic scold quality I know so well in my father.
Am I right in saying Greg’s a homosexual? I thought as much from his vocal tone. Pacifists: that’s their problem. A walking example right before us of someone trying to look ‘decent’ for his audience. There’s no winning as long as counter-currents and the rest exist.
Hi Ben, I might have some insight for you:
White nationalist are, indeed, very provincial minded and entitled in believing they live in the most wonderful country. Anti German sentiment is almost part of their identity and would rather praise Mexican “culture” over German grandeur out of spitefulness/envy.
“Just who are they worried about upsetting?”
Perhaps polish people and other slavic groups that are predominant in America. They also see Hitler as the ultimate evil that wanted to destroy them. Therefore, they prefer to embrace multiculturalism and prove they are better than the Germans by commiting ethno suicide.
“it seems they are all of this breed of timewasting, bourgeois gatekeepers, more content with bohemianism and liberal values than with forging a revolutionary mindset.”
This. That’s exactly who they are. I don’t even bother to read their articles. If anything, I pay attention to Will Williams comments there.
“Why are they still discussing (on Unz) who killed Kennedy, for example? How long will these sites continue for, making no progress, just more and more of the same febrile content?”
Because they are, indeed, time wasters wrapped with their provincialism as a way to attract traffic to their “dissident” site.
They are like this conservative man, Charlie Kirk, who goes to liberal universities to engage in culture wars for public attention and internet traffic. These WNs are not any different than Kirk.
Ultimately, the difference between them and the liberals is that the liberals are relentless and make progress every year.
The preservation of America and its hatred for Adolf Hitler are contradictory to the preservation of the white race, and WNs can’t understand that.
I don’t read their articles anymore either. And indeed: it’s refreshing that Will Williams, unlike most, is aware of the CQ.
The reason this site barely gets any commenters is because it’s divorced from everything you mentioned above, since, unlike them, I’m not American.
One more comment, about what I said of Polish and Slavic peoples hatred for Hitler.
Kevin Alfred Strom made a good observation about how to counter this on his American dissident voices podcast regarding Keith Woods:
“Just because you descend from a nation that, due to historical circumstance, had a conflict with National Socialist Germany, that shouldn’t make you blind to the mythopoeic power of the greatest struggle of all time, between the heroic and spiritually noble National Socialists — for whom the worth of a man was his fidelity to his cosmic and biological destiny — and the crass materialist Jew-dominated capitalists and Communists, for whom the worth of a man was purely economic and who instinctively hate the race-based order we need.”
This is to all Slavic people out there who hate Hitler for occupying their countries and tried to eliminate the subhumans there, but have no issues seeing blacks and orientals being imported instead by the current Americanized global system.
Strom continues:
“My ancestors, for example, were from Norway. Norway was occupied by German troops. I am sure that some Norwegians were imprisoned by the German National Socialists. Some who made war on Germans were probably killed, as were some Germans in that fight. So what? Should Norwegians hate Germans and everything that has come from Germany on that account, from Hitler to Beethoven? No, that’s absurd. ”
And it is indeed absurd, stupid, to hate Hitler and Germany out of a brief historical precendent when the biggest picture is at stake, but a lot of people, especially those who were raised by American values, are really that stupid.
Strom ends his podcast like this:
” The Norwegians and the Germans need to forget those quarrels and wars of the past. The triumph of National Socialism would mean the Norwegians — and our kindred peoples from across all of Europe — would have a chance to exist eternally, and evolve higher and higher, as Fate and Destiny beckon us. No petty nationalism comes close to that — not by 10,000 miles.”
Thanfully, Mr Strom articulates our ideas reall well, but we have a hard time communicating this to most of the public, who are still either too spiritually immature, fearful or pretentious for change.
I’ll leave a link to the podcast here:
https://nationalvanguard.org/2025/03/what-does-not-work/
Thank you for the insights Jamie. Yes, I think my problem is that I expect too much of them. I should just accept them for what they are. Really, my gut instinct is that any suitable planning for our movement cannot take place primarily online. I’d love it were there some type of discreet meeting house property acquired in this country (and in others), where a suitable progress could be discussed. Again though, I’m just not sure how to attract a few people (and it would be only that). I wouldn’t publicise it, or give it a name or anything. Just some type of quiet IRL HQ. I don’t think using my own house would be a good idea, as I’m known around here. Maybe in future I’ll be able to afford a small property off the beaten track – but would it be used?
Every week or so I go down to the coffee shops in my area, and bring a few books with me, and sit there and read for a hour or so. I always hope someone might be interested in what I’m reading, and come over, and spark up a discussion, but in reality that never happens. I’m also the only reader. It’s hard for me to work out to how to publicise such a venture in a country where even promotional leafleting can be a criminal offence. I think it would have to be word of mouth; one doesn’t want all and sundry. I monitor the British Revolutionary Communist Party, having met one of its leaders the other week, and even he could boast to me that they’ve managed to set up somewhere in the region of 170 cells, much as they’re 1. State-supported to a degree and 2. only adolescents. It’s appalling how effective leftists can be. I see that with the recent Tesla-burnings in the US. And all the while Greg and co. sit online, dragging in huge numbers of idle typing hands, kept on the reservation, so to speak.
As it stands, I’m always making note of the fact that I don’t know a single other person (not in jail) in this country who would have the suitable mindset, even for ‘phase 1’ discussions. I just don’t know of any organised National Socialist presence in the UK. I gather the London Forum exists, but their members seem a little cagey about getting back to my emails. In fact, even bog-standard Nationalists not answering my emails is my standard experience over here.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m very glad for WDH. It certainly keeps me together (as best as can be done). I just wish I could translate what I learn here to more people in my own country. I send on the articles to a few personally selected people now and again, but never get an adult response.
In fact, that’s been my dream for years, ever since I discovered the movement.
In Europe, it would have to be done secretly because of the thoughtpolice. But if such a group existed in Europe, I’d join them.
Perhaps the closest thing on this side of the pond is the NS organisation headed by Martin Kerr. Overseas, the London Forum no longer exists, as one of its members, whom I met in person in 2014 (a very friendly Londoner) informed me this year.
Benjamin…
” I don’t think using my own house would be a good idea, as I’m known around here. Maybe in future I’ll be able to afford a small property off the beaten track – but would it be used?”
Don’t lose hope! As long as you have a positive vision for the future, it is achievable and maybe the unexpected can happen.
“I monitor the British Revolutionary Communist Party, having met one of its leaders the other week, and even he could boast to me that they’ve managed to set up somewhere in the region of 170 cells, much as they’re 1. State-supported to a degree and 2. only adolescents.”
It is very interesting. So they have a bunch of adolescents gathering without issue at all? I am not sure how, but that sounds promising.
Usually, these kids are often misguided and broken, but young blood is still young, and if properly guided… maybe they could have a change of heart. Inside them, they crave for stability provided from adults in a chaotic world.
Perhaps you could be that figure they respect and admire.
Recently, I had this idea of seeing liberals and communist as as a force to accelerate the destruction of the system and conservatives as the roadblock that it is only slowing it down.