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Some brief reminiscences on coming to consciousness.

My pen name is Johannes Scharf. More than half of my life have I been writing about race, culture, and religion, mostly in German. Why is it that I devote so much of my time to this particular cause? When I visited the Louvre in Paris last year in December after protesting with the gilets jaunes, I had tears in my eyes upon leaving the museum. What I had seen was a gigantic treasure vault of European art watched over by drowsy black guards who apparently had no appreciation for either the aesthetics or the subjects of the paintings and sculptures. Good heavens, I believe one was even picking his nose! But why would they be interested? It is not their history after all. What was so overwhelming and, in fact, depressing was that I realized that all this fine art will probably be left to rot the very moment white Frenchmen will have ceased to be a majority in their native land. The artists who created these paintings were old white men, so why bother preserving their works of art?

My first book, Sein oder Nichtsein (To Be or Not To Be), was banned in Germany a few years ago despite there being nothing in it that would have proved punishable even under the strict German law. I lost many friends and acquaintances as well as two jobs in the wake of my activism. I have sometimes wondered whether it was really worth all that trouble. I have sometimes felt tempted to simply shut up and blend in. But then I recalled George Orwell’s Winston Smith insisting on two plus two equalling four. In this brief essay I will reflect on how and when I reached the conclusion that two plus two indeed equalled four, and that race was real.

I have sometimes felt tempted to simply shut up and blend in. But then I recalled George Orwell’s Winston Smith insisting on two plus two equalling four.

I came to realize that I was somewhat of a dissident at the age of thirteen and started becoming politically active about two years later. Now, looking back at the age of thirty-one, I believe I know for certain which events in my childhood shaped my understanding of race. Long before noticing that I was in fact a heretic, I had developed a racial awareness. For example, I remember asking a black man, Bist du ein Afrikaner? (‘Are you an African?’) when I was only a few years old – much to the embarrassment of my mother. Born in Richmond, Virginia, I moved with my parents to Southern Germany, where my father is from, when I was one year old. I grew up in a small town close to the Swiss border and only a mile away from Lake Constance. My parents were the ministers of the Protestant church and I felt very much at home in this neat little town. In kindergarten, I remember there being two Turks, Alican and Selçuk, with whom I got along just fine. I knew that they were not exactly like me, but I also felt that they did not pose a threat to me and to all the other boys who looked and talked like me. A few years later, in third grade, my class received two black kids who happened to be twins. As in kindergarten, I had no negative feelings toward the black twins at all. Quite to the contrary; we became friends and we visited each other several times. However, I did notice that they smelled very different from anyone I had known thus far. I discussed this observation with my mother who, again, seemed very uncomfortable with the topic.

Before this encounter with the other I had been in foreign countries with my parents and my siblings multiple times. We had visited England, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria as well as the United States, and on each and every one of these occasions I had felt a strong kinship with the people living in these foreign lands. They did not seem that foreign to me at all. And when a Swedish boy joined my class in seventh and eighth grade, nobody really counted him as a foreigner – just as I myself was not seen as a foreigner despite my mother being American of only partial German but rather predominantly British descent. The first time that I felt utterly alien in a foreign country was when I visited Israel with my father and my sister around my thirteenth birthday. It was, of course, exciting to be in such an environment – especially since it was the beginning of the Second Intifada – but I did see my dad get short-changed by Palestinian mongers twice. They looked him straight in the eye and lied to his face. I felt that this would probably not happen in Sweden or Scotland. I ascribed this sort of behaviour to the Arab mentality.

After these summer holidays in Israel, we moved to the city of Pforzheim. It was there that I fully embraced the dissident worldview. Pforzheim, about 50 percent ethnically German at the time, was so radically different from the small towns and villages I had lived in before that I had a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that this was supposed to be a German city. Some of its neighbourhoods reminded me of Palestine more strongly than of the Germany I had known. Only one third or so of my classmates appeared to be ethnically German, and some of these exotic last names I associated with Eastern Europe. In this new environment I rapidly – perhaps even instantaneously – developed a strong Germanic consciousness that still excluded Eastern Europe and Southern Europe. It was my love of Greek and Roman antiquity and the Renaissance as well as the fact that Eastern Europeans and Southern Europeans were occasionally targeted by Turks and Arabs, who simply saw them as whites, that led to my developing of a white consciousness.

West Africa exists everywhere where the majority of people descend from West Africa, and Europe exists everywhere where the majority of the population is of European stock.

This white consciousness was reinforced when I worked on a container vessel as an engine cadet from 2011 to 2012 and traveled to countries like Jordan, Djibouti, India, the Ivory Coast and Nigeria. I saw many places no tourist would ever have the chance to visit. And I saw a lot of filth and garbage – particularly in India and Africa. When, upon completing basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, a year and a half later, I strolled through the black boroughs of Atlanta, I realized yet another thing: West Africa exists everywhere where the majority of people descend from West Africa, and Europe exists everywhere where the majority of the population is of European stock. That marks the destiny of Haiti and Australia, of Liberia and Canada, of Sierra Leone and Denmark. Or as the famous German-French journalist and best-selling book author Peter Scholl-Latour put it: ‘He who half-absorbs Calcutta does not save Calcutta, but becomes Calcutta himself’. It is almost as simple an equation as two plus two.

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David Schmitt
4 years ago

Dear Mr. Scharf, thank you for the mini-biographical background as it relates to your political philosophy. I share some of the high-resistance path to which your refer, as I am sure many who read ‘Arktos Journal’ do as well. These are badges of honor. I salute you. Also like you, I have a keen sense of behavior and biology and how it relates to ethnicity and race. This morning, I corresponded with a Jewish man who seems quite proud of being Jewish. I claim that very same freedom to be proud of the people from whom I am derived. Anyone should have reverence for their ancestry. And just as with our personal selves, everyone should do some collective self-examination. I think, to a fault, Europeans have done that self-examination superbly well and continue to do so. IT is in our nature, perhaps. However, it is time to retreat from imposed self-hatred and to rebalance even measured self-criticism with our own ethnically-specific forms of realistic pride as well as with a sense of European unity and loyalty. I now live in an area in the United States that retains a strongly-German demographic. Perhaps it is a good opportunity to explore that heritage in confidently cultural and collective ways. Some festivities and practices should be in order to re-assert this collective identity. Keep on.

Johannes Scharf
4 years ago
Reply to  David Schmitt

Dear Mr. Schmitt, thank you for your comment. I couldn’t agree more with what you have to say about white people’s tendency to dwell on the negative aspects of our past while at the same time ignoring or taking for granted all the positive things. It seems as though the double consciousness W.E.B Du Bois was talking about does now apply to whites in spite of the fact that we still make up the majority both in Europe and overseas. I’m very glad that the Midwest and parts of the Far West are still between 80 and 90 percent white. I imagine you live somewhere in Flyover Country which is really the only part of the country that can still be considered “American”. It’s the bread basket of the US and we ought to keep it! I definitely plan on exploring the German heritage in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota etc. some time soon. Greetings from Europe!

David Schmitt
4 years ago

That sounds great Mr. Scharf. Perhaps we could work out an in-person meeting. I think Arktos.com has my address and location, address, email and phone number. I give you both permission to exchange that information.

Karl Austin
Karl Austin
4 years ago

I share your beliefs and concerns. I was one of the lucky few in elementary school when it was first integrated. Even as a first grader I knew this was not going to work. Since then I have watched the entire South being destroyed. Drive through the deep south and you will see one wrecked town after another with whites having either left the public schools or enrolled their children in private schools. What the United States did to the South is similar to what the Soviet Union under Stalin did to the Ukraine. It is merely a difference in intensity and not kind. White southerners become the new Kulaks and now that title is descending upon all white people in America. The United States may have won the Cold War economically but it lost it politically to the forces of cultural Marxism which is now the dominant ideology in the United States. I to have lost family and friends over my activism.I am not sure the United States isn’t terminal. There seems to be a point of no return whereby a nation becomes too big and too diverse to govern itself effectively. I am a non-violent person. I believe in self-determination for all humanity and the right of peaceful separation. You referred to the bread basket which I call the Heartland. (And I include all red states in that definition not just Midwestern states) I think even when whites become a minority nationwide (by 2040 or 2045 depending upon the source) there will still be regions in the Heartland that are still majority white and politically sane.(I do not consider modern liberalism or Neo-conservatism as politically sane ideologies) So therein is our salvation. Red state secession and formation of a United White Heartland of America as a free and independent nation. We need to get off the USS Titanic before she goes bottoms up and drags us to the bottom with her! But for the present our people dance in the shadows of Vesuvius oblivious to its deep audible rumblings.

David Schmitt
4 years ago
Reply to  Karl Austin

Mr. Austin, if you consider your story generally useful, I hope you provide it in some form. Humans often suffer in misery, unable to see the common pattern. Your story might help you and your readers.

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