The Singing Revolution

847 words

German translation here

The Singing Revolution is a documentary about the struggle for sovereignty of the tiny Baltic nation of Estonia, a nation which spent about half the twentieth century in the grip of the Soviet empire. It’s a thoughtful and informative movie which either doesn’t realize or doesn’t care that it’s a rousing story of a White nation’s triumph of local identity over global ideology. The sea of fair-headed patriots gathered as one unshakable extended family in solidarity against an ideology which doesn’t see a place for them in its future is breathtaking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-fsTAnmNIY

The story is centered on the Estonian Song Festival (the Laulupidu), an event held every five years for over a century in which tens of thousands of Estonians gather to sing traditional folk songs. They sang lyrics such as “Land of my fathers/Land that I love/I can’t abandon you” in public and recited slogans such as “One day, no matter what, we will win” in private until they were a free country. The narrator claims it’s “the story of how culture saved a nation,” giving credit to “The Singing Revolution” for lifting the shackles of oppression with neither hatred nor violence.

It’s forgivable that both the national myth and the documentary’s thesis are that they defeated Bolshevism with all their singing. After all, “When 20,000 people start to sing a song, even without a conductor, you can’t shut them up.” In reality, Bolshevism imploded on its own. Up until then, both the militant “forest brothers” and the effete musical conductors were equally powerless against the daunting global juggernaut. It was, however, subversive in its own way. It played a critical role in preserving the Estonian tribal identity against dissolution so that there could be an Estonia left to restore at a later date.

The attentive American White Nationalist will find this offering littered with several parallels with our own struggle. At one point, a man opines that “At school they taught a load of crap, but my father told me how it really was.” It’s heartening to see these populations recover their senses so rapidly in the wake of widespread government brainwashing efforts. Should Global Capitalism implode in a way similar to how Global Communism imploded, will our own people recover their senses as quickly? Are we torchbearers doing everything we can to keep a sense of identity alive?

Far from it. How are we supposed to defeat “them” if we invest so much energy in attacking “them” and so little energy in reinvigorating “us”? If a bunch of White Nationalists got together and were stirred enough by a spirit of fellowship to break into song, what song would that be? I suppose those of a more neo-confederate stripe have “Dixie.” It’s actually written by a Yankee about a Black man pining for slavery, but that’s still better than nothing. And it’s not like this would be difficult to do if one single person bothered to do it. The Wobblies at the turn of the previous century pulled this off by merely re-wording some popular Christian hymns. It’s not hard.

We have over two hundred times as many people in our “nation” as Estonia and yet we lack one single subversive folk song. This suggests that our failure in this department is due to more than a mere oversight. We’re not trailing our European fellow-travelers at the practical politics because we’re too impractical. Practical politics are what people do once they’ve been inspired, once their spirits have been enraptured by a transcendent ideal. White Americans continue to exist in some abstract demographic sense, but we’re in a much worse predicament than the Estonians found themselves in. If White America isn’t already spiritually dead, it’s indubitably on its death bed.

This movie inspired me to the verge of tears, and I strongly recommend watching it. Unfortunately, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that they apparently have something that we don’t. All the pyrotechnics on The Fourth of July put together can’t match the explosive power these Estonians erupt with when they sing in unison. We have traditions worth cherishing and preserving, and we have a folk memory that ought to be preserved, but we don’t have a national song because we don’t have a national voice to sing it with.

And don’t tell me it’s “The Star Spangled Banner” . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDMvfAq7QPw

While I support practical political and intellectual projects, these won’t budge until the metaphysical matters have been addressed. This is why I consider Counter-Currents Publishing so important and encourage folks to support it. There’s something deeply wrong with America, and it’s more than can be accounted for by Jewish mendacity, Black deviance, or the Mexican invasion. In the final analysis, our vulnerability to these problems result from our failure of will, our philosophical missteps, and our general decadence. I still remain proud to be an American, but I recognize that my duty to my nation includes helping to radically re-imagine it and reinvigorate it. Only then, in the wake of that rebirth, will we have something to sing about.