The Beacons Are Lit: An Ode to White Boy Summer

by Hamfast Gamgee

It was the best of times, it was the based of times. And then one day, for no reason at all, White Boy Summer called, and the tribes answered. Three words, one feeling. 

Well, maybe that’s not entirely accurate. White Boy Summer (WBS) invokes many feelings. For many folks, WBS is nothing more than a siren song for vainglorious rabble-rousers, angry white boys airing grievances, and nothing more. For others, WBS is a rebel yell — with memes.

In a recent blog, pastor Doug Wilson decided to address this little band of pale, online miscreants (you can read it here). It was a bloodbath. So, I regret to inform you that WBS is officially dead. After many months of faithful service to white boys everywhere it succumbed to its wounds, words can hurt you after all. Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened. 

R.I.P #WhiteBoySummer 

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((Breaking News))

“This just in. What was first believed to be the cold-blooded murder of a beloved (and glorious) phrase was actually just a bad take, said investigators. The alleged murder weapon turned out to be nothing more than a flaccid red herring (poisoned well water is believed to be the cause of death). A straw-like figure was seen fleeing the scene per witnesses.”

((Back to our regularly scheduled programming))

In all seriousness, Pastor Wilson is an elder of the Church. So, I plan to proceed with caution so as to not disrespect the man. I’ve benefited from many of his books. When he’s on, he’s on. However, Wilson is brought up here not for his hits, but for his misses. His recent take on WBS was one such foul ball. It sailed wide left, nearly killing the popcorn vendor. Poor fella. 

I am not seeking to castigate the man, truly. Feel free to judge his take on WBS for yourself. But, if you’re looking for a sentence-by-sentence rebuttal, you’ll be disappointed. At the end of the day, this article seeks to shed light on WBS, the darling bane of Boomers everywhere.

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Meme It and They Will Come

One of the seemingly dubious hangups for many anti-WBS folks is the decentralized nature of it all. There is no picture to put on the dartboard or person to point to. Now, the wagging finger is starting to cramp up. We get it, it’s frustrating. Many want a pale face to go with it all. Can you blame them? Being mad at a meme just isn’t the same. 

Some seek help from search engines. Google WBS and you’ll be treated with a Wikipedia entry, a video with Sheriff Woody’s son, and an ADL article. Solid sources let me tell ya. It shouldn’t have to be said but I’ll say it anyways, our WBS has nothing to do with any of that. But it’s inconsequential at this point, WBS belongs to us now. Our WBS is Columbus Day, theirs is Indigenous Peoples Day — let the reader understand.

Many came in contact with WBS through the memes. The rhetorical firepower of memes was on full display this past summer. The formula was simple: Post WBS memes without elaboration and let the meme do its work. What was this work exactly? Well, besides the mere enjoyment of a good laugh, many WBS memes also functioned as rhetorical smoke bombs. 

On one side of things, you simply had a group of guys (mostly white Christian men) who found camaraderie online with other like-minded men. Oh, and there were some brown people too (gasp). On the other side were the memes. If you doubt the rhetorical power of memes I’d point you to the meme wars surrounding Trump 2016. 

WBS started as nothing more than a funny phrase that got meme’d as a joke. However, it quickly became a rallying point for many white gents who saw the same writing on the cultural walls. One of those words was dispossession. I can hear the screeching now — it may as well be a sonnet. WBS taught us many things. But, two things stand out: 

1) White folks are not allowed to practice any sort of in-group preference, dare I say “natural affections.”

 2) White folks are not allowed to notice things. Don’t say it, don’t say it. 

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Natural Affections for We, But Not for Thee

Edmund Burke famously said that “people will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.”¹ Sadly, many white folks have been successfully fed through the buzzsaw of guilt and pity politics for far too long. All that remains is a pathetic pile of sawdust that serves little purpose outside of cultural canon fodder for Diversity Inc.

We live in a culture that manufactures a new fill-in-blank history month to celebrate every year. But catching wind that some white folks are seeking to love their past, people, and place? No way. That’s akin to violence. The globohomo message to the White Man is clear: Eat ze bugs, drink ze soy, and clap while your culture collapses.

WBS presupposes the recognition that we, white folk, have a rich, ancestral inheritance we’ve been bequeathed. To quote the late Roger Scruton, “we inherit [the past], and inheritance brings with it not only the rights of ownership, but the duties of trusteeship. Things fought for and died for should not be idly squandered. For they are the property of others, who are not yet born.” ²

In simple terms, WBS is about loving your people and your place. In his new book on Christian Nationalism Stephen Wolfe writes, “This people-place symbiosis is held together by the ties of affection, based fundamentally on natural affection toward kin. One loves a particular people in a particular place because his family did so too, and through his connection with his family and their activity with others, he has a home-land and a people.” 

The propositional nation advocates hate this sort of thing. Damn you if you love a nation or place more than the IDEA of a nation or place. Cringe levels are maxed out.  But we recognize that we are links in a cultural chain. The phrase “reject modernity, embrace tradition” comes to mind. We reject the modern zeitgeists of the age, especially the ones that tell us we should despise the blood that runs through our veins. Does that sound too scary?

We live in a culture that has fully embraced Sarte’s moral dumpster fire of “existence precedes essence.” You can literally be anything, which is why male sumo wrestlers are now winning beauty pageants (shudder). Even the Weimar is blushing. When essence (and nature) gets jettisoned, anything goes. WBS-enjoyers reject these ideas. Instead of buckling under the weight of these zeitgeists, WBS rejects patricide and steps away from the ledge. We recognize that God, in His divine providence, has given us a people, a tribe, and a place to belong. We happily embrace natural affections.

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I’m Something of a Noticer Myself

The level of Noticing is also an issue for many anti-WBS folks. If you’re a fan of statistics and can use pattern recognition to create an accurate picture of the world around you then you might be a racist or worse, anti-Semitic — just ask Kayne West. For folks like Wilson, this means that any of us to his right, who recognize that a white man has a better chance of being struck by lightning than being an NFL cornerback, are just back alley, book bootleggers. Pst! Hey kid, this Luther book will blow your mind ((evil laughter)).

It’s pretty simple, any in-group preference for white people is a no-no. Sadly, this is even the case within much of the Church. If we happen to prefer the company of a pagan white neighbor over that of a Christian Nigerian woman then we’ve fallen headlong into Dante’s inferno, hitting every circle of Hell on the way down. It really is as silly as it sounds. It would’ve been downright dumb to those of the ancient world (here is a helpful anthology for more on that). Yes, you can genuinely want the best for all people groups while still preferring your own more. 

Wilson’s shot across the bow is ironic to many of us. This month marks the annual celebration of No Quarter November (NQN). It is not ironic that he put WBS in his crosshairs, the irony is the fact that any mention of race makes the most hardened NQN-enjoyer trade the Jolly Roger for a flag of pastel colors. We’re mocked for recognizing we have an ethnic and racial identity and that we’re merely fawning over a color. We’re told we’re dabbling in ethnic pufferies and espousing ethnic vainglory, apparently due to insecurities we harbor. We’re merely the byproducts of the CRT factory. In short, we’re simply honkier than thou. 

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Boomers and Their Guise

So, what’s the real rub in all this? Many of the men I know who embrace WBS are productive husbands, great fathers, and members in good standing within their churches. Hardly the rogues that anti-WBS folks envision. The bombardment against WBS has come the hardest from Boomers. They can’t seem to help it. They’ve created caricatures of us in their minds that simply don’t fit the bill. But, Boomers being out of touch is nothing new. 

Many of them give their cultural takes thinking they’ve rightly assessed the pulse of the culture and younger generations. Unfortunately for men like Wilson, they seem to be checking that pulse on a manikin. The caricatures work for pithy blog articles but they fall flat with the reality on the ground. Gatekeeping is a tough gig, we get it. But, their Boomer Gnosticism is quickly leaving them in the rearview mirror. Let’s hoist the black flag for a bit.

Many Boomers grew up within a high-trust society. While the erosion of Western culture was already at work, the white picket fences still stood firm. Heritage was still something to be celebrated and most families were intact. But these are bygone days. Today, many young white men are indoctrinated through various cultural institutions to believe that they’re scum (biologically and morally), that their ancestors were evil, and that they and their posterity deserve nothing but dispossession. Families are fracturing at record rates. They’re losing their fathers and their fatherland. 

Working to recover any sort of ethnic identity or advocating for it is simply not allowed. At this point, many will immediately fire away with the standard rebuttals, something like “Hey man, find your identity in Christ.” The idea of grace not destroying nature still feels too icky to many well-meaning folks. But, union with Christ doesn’t mean androgyny. If you’re a man before Christ you’ll still be one after. If you’re a white man before Christ that doesn’t change. Union with Christ is not a leveling of all biological distinctions. Instead, we live out those distinctions for the glory of God. He has elected for Himself a people from every tribe, tongue, and nation — and guess what, we’re here for it. 

As we see it, young white men have a choice between two realities in our day:

The first reality is one of nihilism, anger, and despair. It means embracing the cultural patricide of your forefathers and heritage. It means neutering yourself from any vitality of the past. In some cases, it means suicide. White males accounted for nearly 70 percent of suicides in 2020. I’ll leave that alone for now.

We recommend the second option: Come to Christ, white boy. Christ has made a way. By his life, death, and resurrection he has purchased salvation and life for those who trust in him. The penalty of sin has been paid. Guilt and shame are traded for an inextinguishable joy. He has made a way to the Father. In Christ there is hope.

Let the Boomers boom. WBS will be here to slap the black pills of nihilism and despair from your hand, white boy. For people, for place — all for the glory of God.

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Footnotes

¹ Edmund Burke; Reflections on the Revolution in France (Hackett Publishing Company, 1987), page 29.
² Roger Scruton; How to Be a Conservative (London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2019), page 182.