NatCon 24: Sam’s “Coming Home” speech

The Natives Rouseabout

Recorded at the dinner of the Australian Natives’ Association national convention in Queensland, 2024.

Transcript:

When looking at the lineup of speakers today it was hard to find something relevant to
talk about that I didn’t learn from them, or from any number of the fine men here today
in the year or so that I have been a member. After all, before I came to the ANA, I was
like many in our spheres: hopelessly entangled in foreign ideologies and movements,
having barely a clue about the rich political, intellectual and artistic traditions raised from
the wellspring of my own nation’s blood and soil.

My mental gymnastics were impeccable. I was living IN this country but I was living
FOR another. With a vague understanding that one day I would return “home” to a place
I’d only ever been on brief holidays to. But whether it was Europa or Brittania or some
other long extinguished society, there was something that never sat right, I was
daydreaming about oaks and meadows a world away while the great plains and
gumtrees lay waiting for me.

I still, subconsciously, couldn’t shake the frame of mind that the Australian continent
was alien to the European and that the days of our settlement here were numbered by
mere fact of nature and that anything native to this land was bound to be a mere dilution
of a more pure, European civilization at best. Of course I appreciate how juvenile that
thinking was in retrospect. As Percy Stephensen writes:

Culture in Australia, if it ever develops indigenously, begins not from the aborigines but
from British culture brought hither by Englishmen, Irishman and Scotsmen throughout
the 19th Century. In a new and quite different environment from that of those damp
British Islands we are here developing the culture which evolved there. We inherit all
that Britain has inherited, and from that point we go on to what?”
That last part is most important: “from that point we go on to what?” Essentially the
question was, what now? And the only answer I could come up with back then
amounted to worshiping a dying flame, if not the ashes themselves. Alas, even the best
mental gymnast can only perform for so long and as I grew a bit older and real life
kicked in my interest in all of this was relegated to a mere hobby.

Still, I yearned for something greater, I kept my eyes and ears open to the movements
of the day, movements that came and went in cycle after cycle of media hysteria as
banners were dropped and romans were thrown. Still, I never found something
compelling or convincing enough to dedicate myself and my labors to in the somewhat
faint hope that I could make a measure of difference. It wasn’t really until covid was
brought to our shores that I renewed my interest in everything political. Within 48 hours
of the first case in Australia, I had lost my job and within 72 I was on the road to
Bryzantium. I suddenly had a lot of spare time on my hands, and I again yearned for a
movement, but I had changed, matured… maybe. My interest in German painters had
long since subsided and the residual love I still felt for Britannia and her empire was
quickly becoming reserved for the young, southern nation she left in her passing. The
nation I had come to know more personally now, being free from the toxic haze that
blankets the greater Sydney region.

Finally, I found the Australian Natives Association, an organization I’d read about very
tangentially in the context of Australia’s federation and an organization I thought was,
like most others of its kind: either long passed or compromised. Thanks to Dio on twitter
and the Austhetics account as well as the website I now knew that wasn’t the case and I
somewhat clumsily rushed an application form out of excitement.

All that searching, and the learning that followed, culminated in me standing here today,
and now I think I’d describe the whole thing as a long walk home. The thing that strikes
me most now is how natural it feels and how ridiculous it seems that our general
worldview is not the standard, at the very least among proclaimed Australian
nationalists.

I’m sure most of these sentiments would be familiar to you, and me repeating them may
seem somewhat tautological. But somewhere therein lies the point. My story in this
regard is not an especially unique one and the times we are experiencing are bound to
see this story repeat itself again and again in the lives of our people.
Housing, cost of living, crime, the list goes on and they all are followed by the word
crisis in national conversation. Meanwhile, those who would never form kinship with us,
and could never build a country like ours, continue to pour in relentlessly at the behest
of our own government.

This storm may well garner swathes of those who have a natural, but A-political love of
country and further awaken the politically active. Sure, the likes of the young LNP or
NSN or even the newly formed British Australia Community may house some of them,
and more power to them, but if I was a betting man, which I am, I would place my bet on
many of them feeling that same discomfort and cognitive dissonance we know so well.
Those who cannot satisfy that itch in their mind will do as I, and many of us here did,
they will wonder until they too arrive home. Or, in some rare cases, they’ll remain
oblivious of us until they start promoting nativism of their own accord, which is all the
more proof to me that we are on the right track.

We need not pretend that these numbers must be huge, we know that our focus is on
building a movement of quality before quantity but I contend that the particular nature of
these trying times will turn the heads of those very men in our country who possess the
qualities of nation builders.

I will attempt to demonstrate the point I’m trying to make with a somewhat relevant
example of a movement we can identify as nativist overseas. Orania is a town in South
Africa. You’ve probably heard of it and might even know all about it. An Afrikaner-only
town of around 2300 people carving out what little claim they have left there in the
Semi-arid and sparsely populated Northern Cape. In a country like South Africa, a
country now so renowned for its farm murders of Afrikaner people, its crippling
incompetence in all levels of government, its now long-since initiated total societal
breakdown, In THAT country, these mere 2300 souls have created a self-sufficient
agricultural economy and construction industry and achieved a state of energy
independence from the quickly disintegrating national grid, which is characterized now
by frequent load shedding and other unplanned interruptions. The town has also built its
own sewage systems, treatment plants and the like. Funnily enough, Oranias local tip
was the only one in that region to comply with the regulations set by the National
government and one of only a handful in the entire country. I’ll leave it up to you to
guess the demographics of the others.

This small but motivated population is developing quickly and, according to their very
active propagandists, they see an annual population increase of around 16%. They
dedicate themselves to preserving not merely their white identity, but their Afrikaner
identity specifically, an admirable cause I’m sure we can all agree, but I want to imagine
how much progress they could have made if their struggle was undertaken in a largely
stable country like that of our own, where the demographics are still somewhat in our
favor.

I contend that our attitude towards action should be along this same vein, Now, I’m not
advocating that we go full William Lane mode and hedge our bets in a new Ausnia somewhere, at least not necessarily, but I am certainly advocating that we continue our
efforts, with all the fervor and commitment we can muster to take this spirit of kinship
and movement building into our wider, respective communities just as the original ANA
did and as some of the veteran members in this room have done for us newer
members. To those members, I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say my sincerest
thanks.

Every little step and every small opportunity that can be taken now, rather than later, is a
step in the right direction. Generational struggle is already a reality in my mind, but I find
comfort in that, because generational struggle, conducted successfully, ingrains itself
into the psyche of a people and further deepens their ties to each other.
Whatever the future of our nation holds, whether it slips from our grasp and begins to
rhyme with that same song repeated in almost every other white settlement in the
Southern hemisphere, or whether our fortunes change and victory becomes inevitable,
this organization, us in this room, and those who couldn’t make it, will be for Australia
what the Oranian is the for Afrikaners: A highly motivated vanguard class hell bent on
the preservation of the Australian and our unique cultural heritage. We alone will
advance our interests, free from those external political and cultural influences that have
had a firm stranglehold on our people in the past.
Although we do have the great honor of knowing members in our midst, who
themselves lived in the Australia we now idolize, we were all born too late to have a
hand in founding our nation.

We are also, to my great despair, born far too early to see our dreams for it come true.
Dreams like an ANA hall in every town, nuclear powered fortress Australia and total
seppo defeat, like the colonization of our Antarctic territories and Queenslander style
cattle stations on Mars.

We are, however, born when we are. And by being born in this era we have been given
what I now see as a most humbling duty: to save our nation, people and culture of
course, but also to shape the aspirations and dreams of the generations of Australians
to come, and to do whatever we can to set the stage for those dreams to be realized.
This has already been done in varying scales, and we can sift through our very own
history to find numerous examples. After all, Australia was first loved in the hearts of
those currency lads and lasses a century before federation and nationhood was
realized.

Throughout that time Australia’s course was not guaranteed, were we to be a nation or
a colony? Agrarian or industrial? Were we to be white, yellow or piebald? Were we to be
a beacon of civilization in the pacific, a new Britannia in the southern seas or just
another post-imperial favela? All of these battles and more were fought by those who
knew that same love for this country and dreamed of what it could be, many of whom
fought under our banner and with our name.

This is the mantle we have been passed, our cross to bear, and it will be my greatest
honor to bear it with you all. Our work is cut out for us and our enemies are plentiful, but
with the Lord in our hearts and the natives association by our sides, the future is ours
for the taking.