Pan-Nationalism

3,908 words

“We aim above the mark, to hit the mark.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature,”
Essays: Second Series (1844)

Nationalism, as well as racial pride and consciousness, are potentially powerful unifying forces. Columbia University history professor Carleton J. H. Hayes, an opponent of European nationalism, viewed nationalism as a form of religion (Hayes, Nationalism: A Religion, 1960).

Race possesses similar mystic power — indeed, power greater than nationalism’s. The German experience demonstrates how important race can be as a unifying and mobilizing force.

Jews, governments, and elites perceive white racial consciousness as deeply inimical to their ambitions. Therefore it is demonized, pathologized, and brutally repressed in flagrant violation of law and basic human rights. In marked contrast, Jewish chauvinism and every form of anti-white racism is lauded, nurtured, and institutionalized because it imparts enormous power to non-white groups.

The Pan-National Option

There are different, natural levels of grouping within H. sapiens resulting from geography, reproductive patterns, population history, language, cultural differentiation, and so forth. These patterns of differentiation exist not only between the major races of mankind, but within every race as well. Consequently, races and subraces form a system of nested hierarchies. Nationalisms on various levels, such as Breton nationalism (mini-), French (full-scale nationalism), or Pan-Slavic (macro-nationalism), are political reflections of this underlying biological reality.

Pan-national movements — macro-nationalisms — provide historical examples of early attempts by Europeans to build loyalties and political institutions across existing national boundaries. They may suggest ways to consolidate genetic and cultural resources to create more inclusive identities while preserving key elements of ethnic and linguistic particularity firmly rooted in history.

The ultimate objective would be the blending of numerous white ethnicities and nationalities into a handful of unitary, large-scale ethnic-linguistic-cultural polities: Nordic, West Central European, East Central European, Southern European, and “Pan-Angle” (English-speakers on four continents). These polities would in turn unite via federation or confederation while retaining a degree of autonomy.

Pan-nationalism is super-nationalism, “nationalism writ large,” nationalism raised to the next level. A Jewish historian of nationalism, Louis L. Snyder defined it as follows:

Nationalism is enlarged in meaning, influence, and scope to include all (pan), who by reason of race, geography, religion, or language, or by a combination of any or all of them, are held to belong to the same category. The “we-group” sees its unity as including all those who “should” belong to the Fatherland or Motherland. The pan-movements grouped together all those holding a similar national sentiment and who believed that they belonged together.

An important fact about nineteenth and early twentieth-century macro-nationalism is that it flourished before the scientific understanding of race had fully developed. Therefore, race in the modern sense was typically not a primary ideological component of pan-nationalist philosophy, as it must be today.

A brief overview of some historical and contemporary macro-nationalisms will provide a concrete feel for the idea. Noteworthy by its absence is any Southern European pan-movement — the only major region of Europe not represented. Whether this is because of a lack of underlying racial, historical, political, linguistic, or cultural cohesion in the region, or some other factor, is unclear. It could be the result of chance.

Pan-Slavism

Pan-Slavism, the doctrine that Slavs should embrace as large a measure of political solidarity as possible, is the oldest and one of the largest macro-nationalist movements, arising in the early nineteenth century. In part it was based upon the remarkably close kinship between the various Slavic languages. Its initial inspiration was in the ideas and writings of German Romantics including Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Georg W. F. Hegel, and particularly Johann Gottfried von Herder, whose works extolled the Slavic Volksgeist.

It has been said that the Pan-Slavist Jan Kollár (1793–1852), a Lutheran Slovak and author of the epic poem Slávy dcera (Slava’s Daughter), believed the Slavic tribes constituted a single race, the “Slavic people.”

In order for race-based macro-nationalism to work, an analogous notion would have to be instilled within each of the pan-national movements. Each “local” pan- identity, in turn, would have to accept a coterminous “white” racial identity psychologically and emotionally uniting whites in all of the various movements while sharply differentiating them from racial outsiders.

During the late nineteenth century Russians came to dominate the debate over the goals and rationale of Pan-Slavism, causing friction and ill-will among smaller Slavic nationalities in the coalition. The intrusion of Russian dynastic and state interests hindered the realization of Pan-Slavic ideals.

Russian Pan-Slavists altered the theoretical basis of the movement, promoting the racially divisive Slavophile notion that western Europe was spiritually and culturally bankrupt, and that it was Russia’s historic mission to rejuvenate Europe by gaining political dominance over it. (Doctrinally, Slavophilism must be distinguised from Pan-Slavism.)

The intellectual cross-currents of Pan-Slavism included some who propagated an Asian ideology. In 1921 Lothrop Stoddard complained that this “Eastern” orientation was a “morbid, mystical dogma that Russia was Asiatic, not European.” This anti-white focus has re-emerged among 21st century Eurasianists. (Witness Guillaume Faye’s comment: “‘Eurasia’ neglects the ethnic unity of greater Europe and regards the Russians as Asians, which they are not.”)

A leading Russian Pan-Slav intellectual was Nikolay Danilevsky (1822–1885), whose Russia and Europe: A Look at the Cultural and Political Relations of the Slavic World to the Romano-German World (Rossiya i Europa) (1869) brought him international fame. His civilizational theory, the first philosophy to view history as a series of “organic” civilizations, prefigured Oswald Spengler’s. Danilevsky held that ten identifiable historical-cultural types (he wrote in the pre-race era) were akin to biological organisms and went through predetermined life cycles including youth, adulthood, and old age. “Slavic” and “Romano-German” civilizations were sharply distinguishable according to Danilevsky. The Slavic world should unify, establishing its capital at Constantinople (Istanbul, Turkey).

Like other nineteenth-century pan-nationalisms, Pan-Slavism lost momentum after WWI. The triumph of Communism in Russia put an end to Russian leadership of the movement, and the new frontiers drawn at Versailles created states with smaller minority populations, achieving many Slav objectives.

Ukrainian scholars have described a brief upsurge of Pan-Slavism under Soviet auspices in the 1940s:

A concerted effort was made by the Soviet authorities in the 1940s to revive Pan-Slavic sentiments, and in 1941 they backed the creation of the All-Slavic Committee and staged the All-Slavic Congress in Moscow. Similarly, All-Slavic Committees were established in the West as Communist Party of the Soviet Union front organizations. Those efforts were more an extension of Soviet foreign policy than reflections of popular sentiment. The Pan-Slavic thrust was dropped by the Soviets after their rupture with Josip Bros Tito’s Yugoslavia in 1948.

Pan-Germanism (Pangermanismus, Alldeutschtum)

Another major European macro-nationalism was Pan-Germanism, whose origins lay in the 1813–15 war of liberation against Napoleon I. It developed particularly during the early years of the Second Reich. Like other nineteenth-century macro-nationalisms, it initially coalesced around commonality of language and culture. However, the movement’s primary significance as an instructional example is its pronounced latter-day biological and anti-Jewish orientation, unique among the macro-nationalisms.

Outside of Germany, “Pan-Germanism” was attacked by anti-German writers such as Austin Harrison in England, André Chéradame in France, and Roland Usher in the US.

Pan-Germanism sought to unite one people (Volksdeutsche). Prior to 1914 there were 15 million Germans living outside the frontiers of the Reich, chiefly in Austria-Hungary and Russia.

The movement is closely associated with the program of the Pan-German League, which excluded Jews from its membership. The League was never very large. At its 1901 peak it had only 21,924 members, drawn chiefly from academic and professional circles, and never more than 8,300 subscribers to its main periodical. The 59 League members who served in the Reichstag between 1894 and 1914 have been described as “party men first and leaguers second.” A 1943 American source states that the League’s annual budget was “around $20,000,” but fails to identify the period or year referred to. If 1943 is used as the reference, this would represent approximately $258,000 today, but, again, the time period is unclear.  It is instructive that a comparatively modest voluntary organization such as this could nevertheless constitute such a potent social and historical force.

Pan-Germanism was influential in Austria through the activities of anti-Jewish activists Georg von Schönerer and Vienna mayor Dr. Karl Lueger. Austrian Pan-Germanism made a profound impression upon Adolf Hitler in his early years.

Seemingly spent after WWI, Pan-Germanism flourished again under National Socialist auspices. Mein Kampf (1925–26) has been called “the first [post-WWI] expression of Pan-Germanism redivivus.” Adolf Hitler, a self-acknowledged Pan-German, may have owed more to Pan-Germanism than to any other ideology or political movement. NS foreign policy was from its inception substantially that advocated by the Pan-German League for half a century.

Despite its important biological orientation, NS Pan-Germanism ultimately proved more nationalist than racialist, provoking enormous intra-white strife. When all is said and done, as Lothrop Stoddard trenchantly observed in 1921, “the Pan-Germans were thinking in terms of nationality instead of race.” This, of course, is the common danger posed by all white nationalisms, large or small. It is why it is so critical to foster a coterminous white identity.

Hitler’s Pan-Germanism colored all of Germany’s wartime policies. The result was a conquest mentality vis-à-vis other Europeans. This showed especially in Germany’s senseless hostility toward Slavs. Germany’s anti-Slav doctrines cannot be explained by physical anthropology or population genetics, but are comprehensible only as an expression of misguided nationalism. True, important figures in the Reich disapproved of the policies, but Hitler’s Pan-Germanism could not be thwarted.

Defeat in 1945 brought an end to Germany’s European hegemony, the loss of extensive territory on Germany’s eastern frontier, the division of what remained of the nation into two states, and massive ethnic cleansing of Germans from vast areas of eastern Europe.

The Pan-Angles

In The Pan-Angles: A Consideration of the Federation of the Seven English-Speaking Nations (1914) (and, later, Why Federate? [1941] on the same topic) Sinclair Kennedy (1875–1947) urged the federation of 140 million (as of 1914) English-speaking whites scattered in all quarters of the globe as the best, perhaps only, way to retain the power and standard of living they had achieved.

The seven English-speaking nations referred to in Kennedy’s title are Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Newfoundland (which remained independent from Canada until 1949), Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. [See map from book]

Kennedy observed, “If an intelligent traveler from Mars were to tour the earth to-day he would jot down in his notebook that New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Newfoundland, Canada, the British Isles, and the United States were all inhabited by the same sort of people.” This observation perfectly captures the logic behind pan-nationalism: unity instead of division.

Kennedy described his book as a “family appeal” to men who “visioned the whole race without losing sight of their local fragment,” “saw the need for blocking intra-race frictions in order to maintain our inter-race supremacy,” and who “held by the ideal of English-speaking men—proud of their race.”

One of the immense virtues of the pan-Angle idea is the global strategic advantage it confers, with major white nations and land masses situated in every portion of the globe. These outposts could serve as planetary bastions for all members of the white race, regardless of the particular national family they belong to.

Pan-Nordicism

Pan-Nordicism, or Pan-Scandinavianism, was a movement for greater unity among the peoples of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands from the 1840s until WWII.

In contemporary times, Louis Snyder, among others, has commented upon the close cooperation between the Nordic nations, which “seek leverage by common action, as if they belonged to one family. The image conveyed is one of fraternal unity.” Cooperation occurs through the Nordic Council, a Nordic bloc in the United Nations, and other channels. Snyder summarized:

In a world burdened by bitter differences between peoples, the Scandinavians presented an idea of unity. Yet each of the five states sees itself as independent, but at the same time is willing to work closely with each other. The national identity is never submerged. This attitude is rare among the macro-nationalisms, which have remained ineffective because of rivalries among their members.

Pan-Europa

A united Europe has long been the dream of anti-white elites, who in recent years have erected a racist, trans-European, quasi-totalitarian state inimical to the interests of whites. An early ideological proponent of Pan-Europa (1923), Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi (a Japanese-Flemish-Greek hybrid) loathed white nationalism — a mindset characteristic of the new “European” order. Like existing nation states, the European Union has adopted “replacement migration,” repression of whites, xenophilia, and Semitic supremacism as its unifying principles. It is a conscious, willful engine of genocide.

In contrast to this abomination, it is instructive to juxtapose a different historical vision, that of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler as articulated in a meeting in 1944, recorded by the chief of staff of the Latvian Legion of the SS:

The present demands that every SS-officer, regardless of nationality . . . must look to the whole living space of the family of German nations. [Himmler then singled out those nations which he regarded as belonging to the German family: the Germans, the Dutch, the Flemish, the Anglo-Saxons, the Scandinavians, and the Baltic peoples.] To combine all those nations into one big family is the most important task at present. It is natural in this process that the German nation, as the largest and strongest, must assume the leading role. [But] this unification has to take place on the principle of equality . . . [Later] this family . . . has to take on the mission to include all Roman nations, and then the Slavic nations, because they, too, are of the white race. It is only through unification of the white race that Western culture could be saved from the danger of the yellow race.

At the present time, the Waffen-SS is leading in this respect because its organisation is based on equality. The Waffen-SS comprises not only German, Roman and Slavic but even Islamic units . . . fighting in close togetherness. Therefore it is of great importance that every Waffen-SS officer gets his training at the same military college.

Pan-Europa has also been championed by elements of the post-WWII nationalist right, including the European Social Movement (ESM) and its racialist splinter the New European Order (NEO) (founded by René Binet and Gaston-Armand Amaudruz), Englishman Oswald Mosley’s Europe a Nation (magazine: The European) and the related National Party of Europe (NPE), Francis Parker Yockey’s European Liberation Front (manifesto: The Proclamation of London, 1949), and Belgian Jean Thiriart‘s Jeune Europe (Young Europe). (Later Thiriart converted to Eurasianism).

Eurasianism

The term “Eurasianism” has a variety of meanings. Basically, it claims to represent some unique synthesis of European and Asian principles. A distinction is made between the “classical Eurasianism” of the 1920s–30s, and the “neo-Eurasianism” of today.

An enlightening summary of classical Eurasianism is worth quoting because of its pertinence to building a white intercontinental federation:

In the view of the [classical] Eurasians, the elemental opposition between Europe and Russia was transcendent, and a fact of life for all time. In a very literal sense, the two were mutually antithetical, for Russia-Eurasia defined itself precisely in terms of its distinctions and differences from the West. Once again, the classical Eurasians described these differences in the familiar language of the Russian nationalist tradition, that is to say, in terms that were essentially moral, ethical, and civilizational: Russia’s spirituality, tolerance, and social collectivity (now, to be sure, all given a distinctively Eurasian twist) contra the individuality, materialism, and colonial violence of Europe. Needless to say, there was no thought whatsoever that the two regions ever could or indeed should overcome their differences and seek to achieve a sort of higher reconciliation. Neither Danilevskii’s nor Spengler’s world-historical models provided any precedent for this sort of universalism, and the classical Eurasians saw no appeal in it. Very much to the contrary, the ultimate goal was to realize as thorough a disengagement as possible from Europe and develop Eurasia as a practical alternative to it.

Because this form of anti-Westernism keeps cropping up in Russian intellectual circles, it must be noted that any theory such as this is inimical to, and incompatible with, a racial worldview in which Russians and other Slavs are deemed integral members of the global white community, common descendants of the original Indo-Europeans.

A well-known neo-Eurasianist is the Russian Aleksandr Dugin, born in 1962. His thought has had some influence upon elements of the Russian elite. In the ex-West he is invariably depicted as a “fascist” and “anti-Semite” by both conservative and Leftist publicists.

Dugin’s core idea is opposition to the post-Cold War “Atlanticist” project of the United States to achieve global domination via a unipolar New World Order. The most important historical task of Eurasianism is to provide the world with a common platform for struggle against US Atlanticism.

According to the Hoover Institution’s John B. Dunlop, in Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia (Osnovy geopolitiki: Geopoliticheskoe budushchee Rossii) (1997), Dugin advocates Russian reabsorption of most Soviet-era possessions and, long-term, the Finlandization of Europe under Russian hegemony. In the East Dugin forsees Russian accommodation with Japan against China, and the ceding of influence over several Southeast Asian nations, including Australia and New Zealand, to China as compensation for dismantlement of its northern regions along Russia’s frontier. Finally, he seeks a Russian-Iranian alliance and the destabilization of Turkey.

A young German academic whose work may be suspect (he writes polemically, using the overblown rhetoric of Jewish hate) claims that Dugin:

admits openly that his main ideas are based on non-Russian anti-democratic concepts such as European integral Traditionalism (René Guénon, Julius Evola, Claudio Mutti, etc.), Western geopolitics (Alfred Mahan, Halford Mackinder, Karl Haushofer, and others), the German “conservative revolution” (Carl Schmitt, Ernst Jünger, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, etc.), and the francophone New Right (Alain de Benoist, Robert Steuckers, Jean Thiriart).

At any rate, Dugin’s Eurasianism, which is not race-based, appears to be a form of Great Russian nationalism rather than pan-nationalism. To the extent that he desires to thwart the globalist ambitions of the Jewish United States (Dugin evidently does not perceive it as such, but that’s what it is), his Eurasianism may be “positive” — but only in terms of old-fashioned power politics.

A contrasting, race-based, Eurasian pan-nationalism is French journalist Guillaume Faye’s proposed “Eurosiberia.”

Faye writes that “Common threats of immense magnitude against our identity and our survival” necessitate “a historical metamorphosis” in intra-European relations, “a break with the narrow egoistic and suicidal logic of the ‘nation states’ that have divided the European people.”

It is necessary to envision an ethnocentric and autocentric Eurosiberia, i.e. an alliance of the whole of peninsular and Central Europe with Russia, from the tip of Brittany to the Bering Strait. The goal is the formation of a federated Empire that is ethnically homogeneous and economically independent, autarkical. In this spirit, Russia would be in the center of such an ensemble, which would be the most powerful and most imposing on the planet. This idea is obviously opposed to that of “Eurasia,” which neglects the ethnic unity of greater Europe and regards the Russians as Asians, which they are not. Eurosiberia must be founded on the principle of the “separation of peoples.” Each one in its place, and in good relations with its neighbors, if possible.

In a world of “blocs of nations and civilizations fighting one another for survival . . . it will be necessary for Eurosiberia to consider allying itself with all white people of European origin in the 21st century, whether they live on the American continent or elsewhere.”

Faye’s conviction that “the very old historical and national rivalries between all our peoples must be dialectically surpassed and replaced by a global unity” expresses the ideal of ethnocentric pan-nationalism perfectly.

Race, Not language or Culture, Paramount

From today’s perspective the major shortcoming of historical macro-nationalism is the absence of a conscious racial or ethnic foundation. Typically, 19th-century pan-nationalists focused on language and culture rather than race. Language is not an adequate basis for an ethnostate, because any group of racially alien people can speak any European language, and today do.

During the heyday of macro-nationalism racial science and white consciousness were not fully developed. This shortcoming was offset to some extent by the fact that race, ethnicity, and nationalism were still closely correlated. Nevertheless, a lack of clear racial identification created problems.

Pan-Americanism (North and South American hemispheric unity) had (and has) nothing to recommend it save geography, which makes it very appealing to the so-called “liberal” mind. Pan-Americanism replicates on the pan- level the contemporary geography-only “nationalist” pretensions of the rulers of the ex-European states. It is unsurprising that the idea enjoyed special favor during the Administration of Franklin Roosevelt.

Pan-Americanism has no basis in shared race, ethnicity, language, or culture. Geographically, much of the United States is closer to Europe than to most of Latin America. It is fallacious to contend that the Americas are united simply because of hemispheric proximity.

A complicated constellation of competing pan-movements on the demographic and geographic periphery of Europe were three rival macro-nationalisms in Turkey: Pan-Ottomanism, the attempt to unite all peoples of the Ottoman Empire (Turks, Arabs, Greeks, Albanians, and Jews) into a super-Ottoman nationality; Pan-Turkism or Pan-Turanism, proclaiming the unity in language, thought and action of all Turkic-speaking peoples; and Pan-Islamism, calling for the union of all Muslims. It is interesting to note that in the 1930s and 40s there was significant sympathy for NS Germany among Pan-Turks.

Pan-Hispanism sought to unite all Spanish-speaking peoples, including the hybrid populations of Latin America. Pan-Lusitanism, also language-centric, targeted the peoples of the old Portuguese empire: multiracial Brazil in Latin America, Goa in India, and the Cape Verde Islands, Angola, Portuguese Guiana, and Mozambique in Africa.

Today, explicit whiteness is a mandatory requirement for all nationalists, micro-, mini-, reconquest, or macro-, who recognize the paramount necessity of racial preservation. Under different historical circumstances this would not necessarily be the case, but it is the dominant issue of our time. There is no need to repeat the mistakes of the past in this regard.

Conclusion

Pan-nationalism’s past failures are not dispositive. It ran aground on the still-vigorous nationalism of its era. But following the deliberate destruction of culturally, religiously, and ethnically homogeneous nations, nationalism in the old sense is a spent force. Contemporary nations amount to little more than geographic boundaries defining the respective jurisdictions of local totalitarian elites.

If successful, pan-nationalism could significantly reduce the excessive political, cultural, linguistic, and ethnic fragmentation and intra-white antagonism of the past, enhancing the ability of whites to cooperate as a group. It would also pool increasingly precious genetic material as the white race continues its demographic implosion. Even sympathetic white observers do not fully comprehend how extreme the population collapse already baked into the cake is under even the most favorable of circumstances. It is this crisis above all which compels the surrender of a degree of ethnic, cultural, and linguistic particularity to insure collective survival.

A genetically based intercontinental federation or confederation of unitary, large-scale ethnic-linguistic-cultural Nordic, West Central European, East Central European, Southern European, and Pan-Angle polities is well-suited to contemporary needs and conditions. The geographical frontiers of the new world order would match its racial frontiers once all minority elements had been separated out and either sent back to their homelands or established in new ones.

It has been argued that what the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. Before a white racial order of any kind manifests itself in reality, it must be envisioned in the minds of men.