Remigration is Inevitable

I like the term “remigration” because it builds the argument that migration can be reversed into the word itself. If migration can happen, then of course remigration can happen too.

To make the case for remigration, we must defend three theses:

1. Remigration is possible.
2. Remigration is desirable.
3. Remigration is moral.

Remigration Is Possible

Up until 1965, American immigration laws were designed to preserve a white supermajority. When those laws were changed, far-sighted Americans predicted that it would lead to steady white demographic displacement through non-white immigration. From the 1960s to the 1990s, the American establishment’s standard response to such fears was: “It will never happen.” Then, in the 1990s, the message shifted overnight to celebrating white demographic decline as a great victory for diversity and anti-racism. Those who did not welcome such a future were told flatly: “They’re here. There’s nothing that we can do about it.” The common denominator of all three positions—it will never happen, it is good, it can’t be stopped—is: “Do nothing to stop white demographic decline.” That’s because the goal of white demographic decline was the broad consensus of America’s ruling elite, which can only be described as hostile to the interests of white Americans.

These establishment talking points are remarkable for their sheer stupidity. Even more remarkable is how effective they are. Even people who deeply deplored white demographic decline felt that nothing could be done. To some extent, they were correct, because as long as people think nothing can be done, they’re right. So the first step is to change their thinking.

Why can’t migrants just go back? Trains, planes, boats, and automobiles don’t go just one way. The turnstile at the border doesn’t go just one way. Modern technology makes mass migration faster and easier than ever. That’s why we are in this mess to begin with.

If it is possible for them to come here, it is possible for them to go back. Remigration is possible. The only barriers to remigration are man-made. These barriers can be unmade. It is only a matter of will.

The best way to convince people that something is possible is to show them that it has already happened. In the case of mass remigration, it has happened many times:

• In the United States in the 1930s, between 1 and 2 million Mexican migrants were repatriated.
• In the United States in 1954–55, 250,000 Mexicans were remigrated by Operation Wetback.
• After Algeria became independent in 1962, more than 800,000 European settlers were forcibly remigrated.
• After the 1991 Gulf War, more than 200,000 Palestinian guest workers were expelled from Kuwait for siding with Saddam Hussein’s invasion.
• Beginning in 2023, Pakistan embarked upon remigrating up to 3 million Afghans from its territory.
• Beginning in 2025, Iran embarked upon remigrating up to 4 million Afghan refugees and migrants.

Surely white First World countries can do better at remigration than countries like Iran and Pakistan—in numbers, logistics, and respect for basic human rights and niceties.

Intellectually speaking, the defenses of mass non-white migration are made of tissue paper. It is easy to overcome such arguments in private discussions. But the establishment’s real bulwark is censorship: their views persisted as long as they controlled the news and entertainment media. Fortunately, dissidents were early adopters of the internet, and the rise of social media allowed our ideas to spread virally.

One reason we lack the will for remigration is that we have been convinced of two falsehoods: (1) that remigration must be entirely a government program, and (2) that remigration must be entirely coercive.

Both assumptions are false. Most migrants were not summoned to our shores by governments. They came because of economic incentives. If those incentives are reversed, they will leave. The government must, of course, set these changes in motion. But once the incentives have been reversed, employers, hospitals, landlords, and migrants themselves will take care of the rest.

Yes, some migrants will need to be ejected forcefully. Yes, some protesters will commit acts of violence. But these will simply give us an excuse to accelerate the process.

The greatest challenge to remigration is finding a way to square the requirements of our very survival with our people’s sometimes morbidly delicate consciences. But it becomes easier to mobilize our people if fair and reasonable solutions are violently rejected.

We cannot, however, allow our enemies—and, in truth, some of our friends—to convince us that even forcible deportations would entail a dramatic increase in violence, on the scale of a civil war.

First, migrants already cause a disproportionate amount of violence, so removing them would decrease violence in the long run.

Second, what we are proposing is perfectly normal. We are going to change the law, then the police and courts can deal with lawbreakers. Criminals sometimes resist violently, which is why we arm police officers. But the fact that some murderers and rapists resist arrest is not an argument to legalize murder and rape. The same is true of people who resist laws governing migration.

In short, the way to argue for remigration is to demonstrate that remigration is both possible and moral. Since people naturally have both moral and practical objections to violence, it is especially important for remigration proposals to minimize violence, indeed to plausibly promise reduced overall social violence once remigration is completed.

An Excursus on “Optics”

To convince the world that remigration is possible, desirable, and moral, we need to know the best means of persuasion. This is not just a debate about the content of our message but also the form. It is the inevitable debate about “optics.” Please learn from my mistakes.

In 2003, I wrote an essay called “To Cleanse America: A Modest Proposal.”^[1] I published it online, on an obscure dissident site, under a pen name. My thesis was that there’s no question that remigration is possible: migrants can leave the same way they came. We don’t lack technical means, we lack the will. I also offered arguments to lower public resistance on moral and practical grounds.

I shared this essay with a prominent American white advocate. He liked the argument but not the word “cleanse,” which was a reference to the term “ethnic cleansing,” which was coined during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. My preference was to take that bull by the horns. If we are going to be accused of ethnic cleansing anyway, we should be prepared to say, “Yes, but we advocate the orderly, peaceful, and just kind of ethnic cleansing. It works like this . . .”

In 2010, I started the Counter-Currents webzine with a friend. In 2011, I was one of the first people in America to promote the ideas of the Great Replacement and White Genocide, which were coined that year.

In June of 2014, I expanded upon my earlier ideas about remigration to a much larger audience in an essay called “The Slow Cleanse.” I chose the title because I believe that we can lower resistance to remigration not just by adopting non-violent means but also by doing it slowly and unobtrusively.

I was gratified that this article was well-received by many thoughtful European Identitarians. Once again, though, some Americans reproached me for my use of “cleanse” in the title. It was “bad optics.” Again, I rejected this argument, but when a friend said “The Slow Cleanse” sounded like a spa treatment, I decided to change the title to “Restoring White Homelands” when I included the essay in The White Nationalist Manifesto in 2018.[2]

The basic issue of optics is this: we face enormous barriers to saving our race. Thus we should not create additional barriers and heavier burdens with “bad optics.” In the case of the “cleanse” idea: just because our enemies will throw a word with negative connotations at us, that doesn’t mean we have to accept that word ourselves.

I’ve always been impatient with people who put too much emphasis on specific words. We aren’t going to win simply by programming our people to speak in anodyne buzzwords, slogans, and euphemisms, for instance the American idea that we can sidestep the taboos against “racism” and “whiteness” by speaking of ourselves as “European-Americans” instead of “whites.”

The issue is not so much the words as the negative connotations attached to them by our enemies. Ultimately, what we are fighting against is the idea that whites taking our own sides in ethnic conflicts is simply evil. That idea cannot be defeated merely by avoiding certain negative words—principally, “white” and “racist”—like Victorian ninnies.

Ultimately, we will win only when people understand that there is a good kind of “racism,” a good kind of “ethnic cleansing,” a good kind of “nationalism”: namely, those that protect our people while respecting the equal rights of other peoples.

If the battle is about the moral legitimacy of white survival, not particular words, then we should not run away from bad words. Taboos against words like “racism” and “nationalism” are already collapsing, partly because we have refused to run from them.

But, by the same token, we should not run toward bad words either.

Thus, optically speaking, we should present the case for remigration in the freshest and most wholesome terms possible, with the least amount of baggage. Again, we already face an enormous uphill battle. Why must we burden ourselves unnecessarily with the weight of the past? The time for the “transvaluation” of language is after we have won.

Remigration Is Desirable

There should be as many cases for remigration as there are people to hear them. Ideally, we should have cases tailored to every white country, every region, every age group, every educational level . . . everyone.

But the main distinction is between those with high and low time preferences, those who are oriented to the present and those who think long-term.

For those who are focused on the present, we should emphasize present problems and short-term gains. Remigration will raise wages, lower crime, lower rents, reduce traffic, reduce waiting times for public services, and generally make life better for white people of all classes, regions, and countries. In short, we must communicate that remigration is the path to prosperity and security.

For those who think long-term, we have much more compelling arguments. Remigration is imperative, because under the current system, white people have no future.

Every white homeland suffers from below-replacement fertility. Combine that with immigration and sufficient time, and we will become extinct in all of our homelands, replaced by foreigners.[3]

This is not accidental, either. White extinction is the predictable consequence of government policies. Which means that we are being subjected to a slow process of genocide, as defined under international law.[4]

To survive, we must reverse these trends. First, we must replace the people in power. Then we must replace demographic decline with growth, migration with remigration.

Our ultimate goal is to create or restore homelands for all our peoples. That requires separation, which requires moving people, moving borders, or both. This is what I call “White Nationalism.”

Under multiculturalism, white people have no future. The goal of White Nationalism is to give our people a future again, in all our homelands.

The idea of white genocide is shocking, and there is no need to lead with it among “normies.” But I think it is useful to share this argument among the leaders of the remigrationist cause, because nothing focuses the mind better than the prospect of extinction.

Beyond that, we do not benefit from illusions or naïveté about the ultimate cause of the Great Replacement. It is genocide. Which means that we are not simply battling against the mistaken and deluded, the selfish and short-sighted, but also the genocidally evil.

Notes

[1] Greg Johnson, “To Cleanse America: A Modest Proposal,” in Confessions of a Reluctant Hater, second ed. (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2016).

[2] Greg Johnson, “Restoring White Homelands,” in The White Nationalist Manifesto (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2018).

[3] Greg Johnson, “White Extinction,” in The White Nationalist Manifesto.

[4] Greg Johnson, “White Genocide,” in The White Nationalist Manifesto.

https://counter-currents.com/2026/05/remigration-is-inevitable