By Davis Carlton

I recently watched a YouTube video by ‘Monsieur Z’ titled, Alternative History: What If America Stayed Great? The video is an exercise in counter-factual history featured on a channel that focuses on speculative “what-if” scenarios. The video’s creator is notably sympathetic with Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign and notes that Trump’s slogan is not without controversy. If America is to be made great again the question naturally arises as to when exactly America was great, and what was it that made America great? The premise of the video is that America was great during the 1950s and subsequently lost that greatness throughout the degeneracy of the 1960s and 70s. This degeneracy was actively promoted by the Communist Party that was secretly supported and funded by the USSR and thoroughly entrenched in Hollywood. The communist cabal was the fruit of seeds that had been planted on American soil by the Frankfurt school, a group of communists that had been expelled from Germany during the 1930s.

The video posits an alternative history in which Joseph McCarthy’s crusade against communism during the 1950s was successful. Communism is rooted out of American institutions such as Hollywood, the media, academia, etc. The result being that the social tumults of the 1960s and 70s don’t happen. The nuclear family remains largely intact, Nixon wins the 1960 Presidential election over Kennedy, a more aggressively anti-communist America prevents the spread of international communism, and America is decisively less interventionist in its dealings in the Middle East. The video’s creator speculates that this alternative America would have been less concerned with “social progress” and would have pursued scientific progress instead. The creator even speculates that the McCarthyite rejection of communism would have brought about an interest in eugenics in more recent decades.

I found the video interesting and agree with several of the author’s assertions about what could have happened in a more thoroughly anti-communist America. The author correctly connects the decline of the family and degenerate trends in society to communist-infiltrated Hollywood produced propaganda. I was pleasantly surprised that the video’s creator also names the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act as a product of the communist agenda. The video’s creator also addresses the devaluation of American currency, the sexual revolution, the breakdown of the family, and the generally rebellious spirit of the modern age. While there is much to commend in this video, I believe there are also ways in which this video is obviously lacking.

The first problem is that the video attributes the subversion of American values and institutions to infiltration by the communists and correctly notes that this subversion largely began with the establishment of the Frankfurt School in America by exiled communists from Germany. The question that this obviously raises is why the video doesn’t come out and simply name the Jew. The Jewish connection to the Frankfurt School has been thoroughly documented, and the pictures shown on this particular YouTube video show the members of the Frankfurt School with a distinctly Semitic appearance. There are several plausible answers to this question. It’s possible that the author is ignorant of the prominent role that Jews played in the foundation and development of the Frankfurt School and other subversive activities. It’s possible that Mr. Z is motivated by political correctness that dictates that “anti-Semitic” opinions are inadmissible. Finally it’s possible that Mr. Z doesn’t want to have his videos deleted and his channel banned by YouTube. Whatever the case, Mr. Z avoids poking that particular bear, at least in this particular video.

Another issue is that Mr. Z sees American greatness as a manifestation of the 1950s. This is obviously a very brief period of American history, so this naturally raises the question of American greatness prior to this particular decade. Most defenders of American identity usually justify America’s existence as a necessary force for good in the world. Mainstream or neo-conservatives beam with pride at America’s involvement in the wars of the twentieth century – the Second World War in particular. The defeat of fascism and National Socialism are used to justify ruining the world for the imaginable future and intentionally killing innocent civilians in Germany, Italy, and Japan.

Almost no one is willing to defend America’s past attitudes about slavery, segregation, or anti-miscegenation, and liberals are fond of pointing to these facets of American history as a reason to reject the concept of American greatness in any form. America can only be good or great insofar as she works to eradicate past “injustices” and leans on other nations to do the same. This vision is a leftist reworking of the imperialist ideal of spreading American or vaguely Western egalitarian values throughout the world. This ideal was readily apparent in Michelle Obama’s proclamation during her husband’s presidential campaign that she was proud of her country for the first time in her adult life. Mainstream conservatives were aghast, but this is simply the logical conclusion of liberal egalitarianism representing the consensus that conservatives have accepted. If equality is true and the highest goal of a society and the standard by which justice is to be measured, then the America of the past must be defined as a “racist,” “sexist,” and “xenophobic,” evil.

The final and perhaps most serious issue is that Mr. Z avoids uncomfortable conclusions about race and demographics. To be fair, Mr. Z does talk about the harmful effects of America’s immigration policy after 1965, but the video largely avoids discussing the issue of how the racial transformation of America has irreversibly changed America for the worse. America was built and made great by the white Christians who founded this country. The demographic transformation that America has experienced in recent decades cannot be cured or fixed by some misguided notion of “assimilation.” American culture was great because it was formed and sustained by white Christians, and this once great culture has been lost as the traditional American people have progressively given way to an alien population. To liberals, the root of the problem is white people and white culture by extension. This is why liberals continue to openly advocate for a new, non-white “melting pot” America where principles like “diversity,” “inclusion,” and equality are the highest virtues.

Trump’s campaign slogan, Make America Great Again, was excellent rhetoric if nothing else. Trump managed to tap a desire, even if only subconscious, for America’s imperiled white majority to return to an America that was at least culturally Christian, safe, prosperous, and of course, white. The answer is not to desire to simply rewind America to the 1950s and progress in an alternate timeline, because the seeds of America’s demise were sown long before the 1950s. Likewise, America’s revival won’t be accomplished by simply building a wall, enacting better economic policies or trade deals, or practicing modestly improved fiscal responsibility. America can only be saved by acknowledging what made her great in the first place; white Christian culture created by a particular white Christian people. America, along with the other nations of the West must acknowledge that our loss of greatness and our displacement within our own homelands will only cease once we have repented of our rebellion against God.