By Davis Carlton

Recently James White has expressed disgust with those who anonymously criticize him online. White was particularly irked by a user going by Defiant Baptist on X joking about White’s banter regarding Doug Wilson, suggesting that it sounded gay. Others have commented about some of White’s fashion choices regarding the sweaters he wears while recording the Dividing Line. White has suggested that men who maintain online social media accounts ought to be “doxxed.” Rich Pierce of Alpha & Omega Ministries has echoed this sentiment as well as suggesting that the church’s clergy and elders be aware of all of their members’ social media activity. White’s justification for doxxing online anons is that the Apostles warned Christians of wolves in sheep’s clothing. This is true enough, but what justifies White’s contention that online anonymous activity is innately serving the purposes of wickedness? Here are a few things that I would like Christians like James White, Rich Pierce and others who are condemning those using pseudonyms to consider.

First, I can safely say that I and most of the others that I follow on X and am friends with on Facebook are genuinely decent people. Their ideological opponents might not think so, but I have interacted with many of these people for years and know them to be good, godly Christian men and women. I believe that the same can be said of many people who disagree with Kinism, Christian Nationalism, or the Dissident Right. I think that those who disagree are wrong, but it wouldn’t justify me damning all Christians who are wrong on this issue to Hell, which is what I have frequently seen from the other side.

I find it odd that most of those opposed to online anons appeal to ecclesiastical oversight and authority as the solution to the problem. Virtually all of our detractors are thorough-going Protestants, so they have no problem in acknowledging that ecclesiastical authorities can be wrong. This should be a given, considering most of the mainstream “conservative” Protestant denominations today are the results of the mainline denominations over the past century succumbing to creeping liberalism. Virtually none of the Baptist detractors of online anons regards the authority of the American Baptist Convention, and many have even pointed out the same problems emerging in the Southern Baptist Convention. The same could be said of Presbyterians regarding the PCUSA, Anglicans regarding the Episcopal Church, Lutherans regarding the ELCA and to an increasing extent the LCMS and WELS. The point is that liberalism has been gaining traction in otherwise ostensibly conservative Christian denominations for at least the past century and a half. These chickens are coming home to roost and we are suffering the consequences.

This isn’t to say that we ought to unnecessarily abuse clergy, or disrespect church authority when it isn’t appropriate, but a core tenet of the Protestant Reformation is that the church is fallible and can err in her judgments, particularly on pastoral issues like church discipline. Churchmen and clergy ought to be above reproach and not given to filthy lucre, but history is filled with examples of clergy being swayed in the wrong direction by impure motives. There are also many examples of clergy who meant well but still managed to get things wrong.

I’m particularly concerned with those who make appeal to the church authority because such appeals commonly come from those who are comfortably established in those very positions of church authority. James White, Joe Boot, Doug Wilson, and Andrew Sandlin condemn anons because they perceive, correctly in many cases, that the majority of elders and pastors agree with them and will readily denounce the Dissident Right as “racists” and bigots. Thus an ecclesiastical crackdown on anonymous posting online serves their interests because those dropping the hammer already agree with the mainstream establishment. This appeal to ecclesiastical authority becomes problematic when the question of historical continuity is raised.

Like it or not, proponents of race realism, ethno-nationalism, and Kinism have historic orthodoxy on our side. There is no doubt that the vast majority of Christians throughout history have agreed with our positions on these relevant issues. Books like Christian Race Realism by Rev. Michael Spangler as well as compendiums such as, Who is My Neighbor? by Dow and Achord make this abundantly clear. When I’m told that I need to submit myself to church leaders for excommunication, I usually ask if they similarly reject men who, like R.L. Dabney, were firmly in our camp.

Usually the response is that men like Dabney were in sin and needed to repent. The problem here is that Dabney was not an anomaly. He is firmly on solid ground when it comes to historic Christian teachings, and Christian stalwarts like him would have rejected the egalitarianism of those boldly proclaiming that they have the monopoly on Christian truth. In other words, anons have legitimately questioned why we should accept the censure of modern elders when these same elders would anathematize the elders of the past, often from their own denomination or theological tradition? Modern pastors and elders condemning the Dissident Right and appealing to their own ecclesiastical authority are essentially sawing off the branches upon which they are sitting.

My suspicion is that those demanding the doxxing of online anons aren’t doing so out of genuine concern for the state of the souls of those who post anonymously, but as a means of silencing critics in the absence of a compelling exegetical case. If Christian nationalism of any variety is wrong or if egalitarianism is true, then it should be easy to demonstrate this from Scripture. The motivation behind doxxing can be presented as a legitimate concern hiding a desire to see the lives of one’s opponents ruined. The reason that doxxing is an effective threat is because of the spirit of the age in which we live. The opinions expressed by many anons on the Dissident Right were mainstream as recently as the close of the Second World War, but have since become utterly anathema in polite society.

I wanted to explain why I maintain a certain amount of online anonymity to provide some clarity and context. I am a married man with children, and I work in a small business. My views, particularly on geo-politics and race, are politically incorrect. Most “normies” would find what I have to say offensive simply because of the level of programming and indoctrination that has conditioned them to think the way that they do. My aim in posting online and writing articles isn’t to use anonymity as a cloak of maliciousness, but to discuss issues that are considered too taboo to be discussed openly without bringing about unnecessarily harsh consequences down upon myself and my family. This shouldn’t be too much to ask.

My friendly advice to pastors and elders demanding the identities of online anons is to do their best at actually engaging opposing arguments. Some posters might merit blocking, but there are several that are crafting their beliefs about race based upon their legitimate experience being confirmed by a rediscovery of older ideas that used to pervade the consensus of Christian thought. Blocking is a temporary band aid and doxxing only works as long as there is enough of a social consensus enforcing political correctness. The Shiloh Hendrix incident demonstrates that whites, especially younger whites are experiencing fatigue with black misbehavior coupled with being told that they are the ones to blame. There is a real risk that clergy of the Baby Boomer generation run of alienating younger generations by refusing to understand their concerns and problems. Ultimately, at the end of the day, reality cannot be blocked on social media or excommunicated by a disapproving elder board.