William Pierce on Ethnonationalism & the European Union 

Simon Vouet, The Rape of Europa, circa 1640

1,430 words

A recurring debate in Identitarian circles is on the merits of petty nationalism and the traditional nation-states of Europe as against pan-European identity and the European Union. While nationalists in general have tended to be overwhelmingly hostile to the EU as a universalist and deracinating entity, some identitarians such as Guillaume Faye and Richard Spencer have praised the project in principle as a precursor to a racialist European Empire. 

Both the nation-state and the pan-European state, as projects, have their respective merits and problems. However, in any event, this particular question of political form I believe is secondary. Neither the nation-state nor the European Union as such are responsible for immigration. Rather, today, the governments of Western European nation-states and of the EU are promoting immigration, while the governments of Central European nation-states are opposing immigration. 

The key here is not the level of government (national vs. continental) as such but the government’s composition, ideology, and policies. The Schmittian friend/enemy distinction for an Identitarian should be as follows: Is the government (or elite) in question supporting European socio-cultural and genetic interests? If so, it is a friend, if not, it is an enemy. Everything else is secondary. We should support Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia in their opposition to German- and EU-imposed immigration. Simultaneously, if by some miracle the EU were to be hijacked by nationalists, then we would actually welcome the Union’s pressure against any remaining liberal nation-states who would persist in importing non-European settlers into our common European homeland. If a President Marine Le Pen were to launch a European “great project” to jointly finance Airbus to build a high-tech fence to protect the borders of Europe, I think both the general public and nationalists would approve. 

The European Union has a certain autonomous influence (e.g. economic pressure/incentives) but is in general not a Schmittian sovereign, and as such the national governments are ultimately responsible as the real deciders (witness the various national governments’ unilateral decisions to suspend the Schengen Area of free movement of people and to deport some illegals in the ongoing “migrant crisis”). Primary focus on opposition to the EU as such – such as that of Nigel Farage and to a lesser extent of Marine Le Pen – is at best unhelpful to our cause and at worst a conscious diversionary tactic, meant to dissipate nationalist sentiment in a harmless sideshow.

I am struck at how the legendary American White Nationalist William Luther Pierce had already thought about many of these issues, always with the imperative of European evolutionary interests in mind. Thus he said in one of his American Dissident Voices broadcasts: 

A lot of people, conservatives especially, are still much more comfortable with the old-fashioned sort of nationalism – or with an ethnic nationalism which is much more limited in scope than our racial nationalism. Conservatives are more comfortable with Scottish nationalism or German nationalism or Polish nationalism. And that’s all right. We encourage these more limited ethnic nationalisms. We encourage any nationalism which is not anti-European or anti-White. We even welcome Black nationalism, Hindu nationalism, or Chinese nationalism, because nationalists of every variety are facing a much bigger threat today than any rival nationalism. Intelligent Hindu nationalists understand that Irish nationalists, Ukrainian nationalists, and Swedish nationalists need not be hostile to them, and we understand that too.[1]

Pierce thus was comfortable supporting petty nationalism when this served European interests. However, he was not opposed to pan-European cooperation or even a degree of European economic union. While he was a harsh critic of “free trade” and the promotion of interdependence, he made an exception for free trade among kin peoples: 

The only situation in which any sort of close economic linkage with another country – such as “free trade” on any significant scale – makes sense is when there is a real community of interests. That is a fundamental and obvious truth, but it is completely ignored by the people pushing for globalization. In order for there to be a community of interests between two countries, in the first place their populations must be of the same race. Thus, it has been the sheerest folly to tie the U.S. economy to those of Asia and Latin America. The basic industries which have been driven out of the United States because of competition from these non-White areas of the world, where wage scales are so different – our machine-tool industry, for example, and our consumer electronics industry – were essential to our autonomy. And now, with the collapsing economies in Asia and Mexico pulling our economy down with them, we can’t simply disengage, because we no longer have autonomy. 

With Russia we at least have racial similarity, but there are other reasons why too close an economic involvement with Russia is not good for us now. The most important of those reasons is the men who are now running Russia. The man out front, of course, is President Boris Yeltsin. But Yeltsin is, like Bill Clinton, a seriously flawed man: he’s an alcoholic and a skirt-chaser. In fact, he is primarily a clown who also is a good actor, someone who can posture effectively for the television cameras and pull in the votes from the Russian masses. And because of his acting ability he has been strongly supported by the hard, sober men who for all practical purposes own Russia and tell Yeltsin what to do. Unfortunately, the majority of these men are Jews, and many also are gangsters, organized crime bosses.[2]

I could not help but thinking, from Pierce’s description of free trade and interdependence promoting a “community of interests” among racially similar peoples, of the European Union.[2] EU advocates often use similar language for their rather vaguely-defined “project,” speaking of creating a “community of destiny.” I am not absolutely certain that Pierce had the EU in mind,[3] but when he was speaking in 1998 the emerging trade bloc was certainly in the news with its efforts to create a European common currency. In any event the EU’s very conscious promotion of intra-European free trade and interdependence perfectly matches Pierce’s reasoning.[4] 

But the EU is unacceptable to Pierce given his second criterion: The governments composing it are, in their overwhelming majority, not actually pro-European. Today, no doubt a union of the Visegrád nations, and perhaps of “Intermarium,” would most closely respect Pierce’s imperatives. But what a sad state of affairs if only Central Europe should survive in the coming centuries. We must work for a future in which all of the great centers of our common European civilization should renew themselves: In Europe and Russia, in the Americas, and in Australasia. I can imagine them dreaming and working together, in a great European Commonwealth, for the upward evolution of our people, reaching for the stars . . .

Notes

1. William Pierce, “Nationalism vs. the New World Order,” American Dissident Voices, May 23, 1998.

1. William Pierce, “The Russian Economy,” American Dissident Voices, September 5, 1998.

2. General Charles de Gaulle, in his memoirs, also cited European nations’ “[a]ll being of the same White race” among the grounds for a European political organization. Guillaume Durocher, “Conservative Politician Punished for Pointing Out ‘France Is a White Country,’” The Occidental Observer, October 1, 2015. http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2015/10/conservative-politician-punished-pointing-out-france-is-a-white-country/

3. Pierce’s only direct reference to the EU I have come across is him denouncing “the top politicians [of] the so-called European Union” for threatening economic sanctions against Austria in the year 2000 for allowing the democratically-elected nationalist party of Jörg Haider to participate in the government. That Pierce prefaced “European Union” with “so-called” suggests that he quite liked what the name suggested. William Pierce, “The Club,” American Dissident Voices, February 12, 2000.

4. Of course, the EU’s current rulers also promote free trade with just about every other part of the world with a kind of dull money-chasing dogmatism, running directly counter to Pierce’s position. Existing agreements with the non-European world include those with Mexico, South Korea, and Israel. There are also major planned trade deals in service of Imperial-American and International Zionist interests. These include the “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership” with the United States of America – meant to bind the EU and the U.S. closer together, defend Transatlantic interests as an “economic NATO,” create a kind of Transatlantic (and then possibly global) regulatory proto-government, and finally subject national governments to transnational corporate courts. Ongoing or planned EU agreements with Serbia, Moldova, and Ukraine are explicitly aimed at curtailing Russian influence through economic carrots (bribery, one might say). Finally, the EU today is at the forefront of promoting the World Trade Organization, a global carbon regime, and other vehicles of world government.