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A common opinion among both White Nationalists and our critics is that a specifically “white” racial identity only makes sense in a colonial society like the United States, in which immigrants from many European lands have merged together to form a generic white racial identity, which is distinct from non-white groups like blacks, Asians, and Amerindians. In Europe, however, different peoples think of themselves as Dutch or Italian or Danish first, not merely as white.
There are two problems with this distinction.
First, there are no generic whites, even in European colonial melting pots.
Second, all whites, even those with strong attachments to particular ethnic identities, are also capable of an overarching sense of white racial solidarity.
There are many European colonial societies, in which different European ethnic groups have merged together. But these societies are not all the same. The United States and Canada occupy the same continent and have similar ethnic histories. But English-speaking Canadians are not the same people as Americans. Nor are Americans the same as Australians and New Zealanders, both of which are English-speaking mixed European colonial peoples as well. The same can be said of the Spanish-speaking peoples of the Southern Cone of South America, all of whom have similar histories but are not a homogeneous population.
What differentiates these colonial peoples? First, just to be clear, my argument does not require an account of what differentiates Americans and Canadians. It merely requires observing the fact that they are different. Second, there are many causes of differentiation: genetic, cultural, and environmental. Genetically, the “generic whites” of Argentina and Canada are quite distinct. Culturally, they are distinct because of founder effects (England vs. Spain) and different subsequent settlement patterns. And of course different natural environments select for different industries, lifestyles, and settler populations. Beyond that, nations are differentiated by a host of historical contingencies: wars, revolutions, assassinations, economic crises, natural disasters, technological breakthroughs, the discovery of natural resources, etc.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s Toward a New Nationalism here.
In short, there is something more to being a white American than simply being white. We are not “generic white people.” We have a distinct white American identity.
Indeed, there is no need to even use the word “white,” for Americans have long assumed that being an American presupposes being white, just as being French presupposes being white.
It is only an increasingly shopworn civic fiction that allows us to refer to African Americans or Mexican Americans, just as in France there are African or Arab Frenchmen.
Our European cousins are free, of course, to disdain us as deracinated, homogenized, and cultureless (between bites of le Big Mac), but Americans, Anglo-Canadians, French Canadians, Australians, and kiwis are distinct white nations, just like the Swedes, Norwegians, and Czechs.
So when I speak of White Nationalism, I mean two things.
First, White Nationalism means ethnonationalism for all white nations, meaning politically sovereign and ethnically defined homelands for all white peoples—French, Basque, American, Quebecois, etc. A homeland for every white people that aspires to sovereignty.
Second, White Nationalism also refers to a sense of wider racial solidarity—a sense of common origins, common enemies, and a common destiny. This sensibility exists at the highest levels of the ethnonationalist movements in all white nations. It can serve as the foundation for alliances, intergovernmental organizations, and treaty organizations between white nations, which can mediate conflicts between member states, create a united front against other racial and geopolitical blocs, and help whites address global environmental and demographic problems.
White Nationalism does not, however, imply grandiose notions like a politically unified white imperium. Empires are generally imposed by violence and maintained by oppression and the erasure of distinct white identities.
Nations can, of course, be coaxed into joining federations like the European Union, which has not yet become a sovereign superstate. But the real test is whether they are allowed to leave. One can still leave the EU. But the South could not leave the United States.
Nationalism is opposed to all forms of imperialism, even white imperialism—especially white imperialism, since imperialism is worse at the expense of fellow whites than non-whites.
But what about the persistence of Old World national identities in European colonial societies? It is easy to point to long histories of ethnic conflicts between immigrant groups. But over the past few generations, these have been largely erased due to increasing attenuation of Old World ties and widespread intermarriage. Today, when an American claims to be a hyphenated Irish-, Italian-, Anglo-, Polish-, German- or French-American, chances are he is LARPing.
Most Americans’ self-described “ethnicity” is determined simply by their surnames, not their actual descent. I know “Irish” Americans who have an Irish surname because of an Irish great-grandfather, but the other 7/8 of their ethnic heritage is Italian. I know “Italian” Americans who are one quarter Italian, one quarter French, and half Irish, but they are “Italian” because of an Italian surname.
Moreover, in terms of language, culture, and even cuisine, an “Italian” American (who is 3/4 Irish) has more in common with a WASP (who is half Anglo and half German) than he does with his cousins in Palermo or Dublin.
And this is true even of Americans who still happen to be of a single Old World ethnic stock but who have lost any meaningful connection to Europe.
Sure, Americans still celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and Oktoberfest. But increasingly, it is the same people showing up at both events—American people. The American ethnic identity grows stronger, and Old World identities grow weaker, with every generation on this continent and with every ethnic crossing. Eventually, even surname LARPing will disappear. Indeed, many younger Americans already don’t even know where their surnames come from.
Again, I completely share our European cousins’ horror at this process of identity erasure. But the result is not generic white people. If colonial melting pots simply produced generic whites, there would be no differences between Americans and Canadians. But there are differences. Therefore, the product of American history is not a generic white person, but a new American ethnic identity, an American people that needs to restore its sovereign homeland.
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29 comments
The “historical American nation,” as it were.
The only way to stop the “American” identity from devolving from a predominantly mono-racial society rooted in European culture and ethnicities into a multiracial society encompassing all ethnicities, is for Americans to seize upon and restore their European heritage.
I don’t know if it was your intent, but you seem very dismissive of Americans who try to retain some semblance of their European ethnic heritage. Sure, it is difficult when you are a European “mutt” (so to speak), but it is not pointless to identify with your ancestors as opposed to some entirely unrelated race, culture or ethnicity.
If you maintain you are simply “American”, I believe you are far more susceptible to being swept away as a culture (and far more likely to be), just as our English, Danish, Irish, German, Italian, Polish, etc, etc, forefathers had their ethnic identities swept away by the impetus to be “American.” . I myself am a 4th generation American who is still from a single, Old-World, ethnic stock, and I understand how easily it is to forget that you are European.
Sometimes national identities have to be restored or even created anew to create stable nations. After Poland was partitioned by Russian, German and Austrian powers, it disappeared as a nation for nearly 150 years, and it wasn’t until it remembered its roots that it was able to restore itself to sovereignty.
America needs to do the same – we need to remember who we are and from where we came , and not just celebrate being “American.” To remember that we are at heart Europeans is how we hold on to America.
Generally speaking, I disagree. I don’t disagree that it’s good to hold onto whatever vestiges of European identity are still lingering, but the vast majority of the time it is really LARPing.
Mostly I disagree that having an American identity is necessarily empty and meaningless. That’s what it has become to most people, but that is a result of multiculturalism, mass immigration, and the intentional expansion of the definition of “American” to essentially be everything and nothing. Being American used to actually mean something in an ethno-cultural sense, by and large. The process of American ethnogenesis was basically halted midway.
To my mind, a large component of the WN project is going to revolve around the creation of a people, the birth of a nation and in the American context that’s going to mean an American people. It will be conscious, intentional ethnogenesis. “Become who we are,” as Richard Spencer puts it. There are a number of examples of this sort of intentional ethnogenesis in European and American history, mostly religious. The Amish are in a sense not merely PA Dutch, for instance. They broke off and basically set themselves on the path of ethnogenesis based around their religious belief. Many times these groups absorb various strands that choose, for one reason or another, to come together.
The colonial history of America is basically that. Think of all the Protestant “refugees” that upped stakes and decided to join the British colonies (French Huguenots, various Swiss and Germans, Ulster Scots, Dutch, even Protestant Italians and other more exotic types on occasion).
Well done.
Though I am no fan of post-modernism’s assaults on “essentialism” in general, when it comes to European identities, it has a point to make. The snobs who like to compare strong Euro national identities with supposedly rootless New World White identities ignore the history of identity formation among Europeans. The French, for example, did not simply drop out of the sky in a great Napoleonic monolith in the 19th century. French identity is the result of a very long process which includes Gauls, Romans, Franks, etc. Just because the process is older does not mean that there was no process.
Likewise, what I like to call the mitosis syndrome operates in all groups. As soon as a groups is formed, it starts to subdivide. Anyone who knows Europeans on the ground knows that regionalism is also alive within the apparently unified national states. When I was a student in Rome, the Romans told me that “south of here they’re all Arabs and north of here they’re all Germans; we’re the only real Italians.”
So yes, having lived long both in the US and Canada, I can testify to the reality and the differences among White identities in the northern New World. Amen. We are not generic, even if young.
PS. Some Eurosnobs forget the crucial role of enemies in the formation of identity. White hostility shaped the various West African tribes here (who had likely sold one another off into slavery to the waiting ships) into a Black identity (messed up as it is.) And the tidal wave of Third World presence among Europeans may, Gods willing, wake them up to the commonality of Whiteness that they have in the eyes of the hungry savages who care not at all for the differences between a Dane and Swede.
I’m curious whether there are any examples from the Middle Ages or Renaissance Era of letters, proclamations, etc. demonstrating pan-European identity in the face of the threats from the south and east. The Crusades do spring to mind – and, in a sense, Christian identity *was* European identity in those times – but are there other (secular) examples?
Agree with the two-tiered implications of White Nationalism (which I’ve always explained as ethnic nationalism for European countries with an overarching White identity to be employed against general threats to the race).
I suggest taking a look at George of Podebrady: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_of_Pod%C4%9Bbrady
Seems like a very interesting character. Thank you for the reference!
American ethnic identity is the: Western.
West because the term-ethnicity-is associated to culture, customs, history and race.
However, if we talk about breeds, the American people is white.
If we talk about the first discoverers of what is now the United States of America, we would have to look for the Spanish Empire, then joined other European, French, Italians and British explorers.
http://www.abc.es/historia/abci-mito-accion-gracias-espanoles-celebraron-56-anos-antes-peregrinos-201511260104_noticia.html
That’s the key, the word Western, although they already try to anti-Western power groups, ban it.
This is interesting. I was thinking about this very thing when listening to your interview with Vox Day last week and this topic came up. It makes very good sense that Europeans would prioritize their national identity over race, but it occurred to me that there was something missing from the conversation.
My own thought while listening to that interview was concerning racial minorities within the European nations. Much is made today about the recent invaders, but I am sure there are some few who have been there for a few generations. So, I wonder, how the third generation African living in France is received by the French (when they aren’t virtue signaling). Does a Frenchman of Celtic and Germanic stock consider this African “French”? Not being well travelled, I don’t know the answer to this with certainty, but my guess is that he does not.
This also causes me to wonder about the hierarchy of kinship within and among the nations. I have to say that I feel more of a bond with my white Anglo-Canadian neighbor than I do with the African American living on the block next door, even though I certainly have more of a bond with my white neighbor than the Anglo-Canadian. I also feel a closer kinship to the Anglo-Canadian than I do a French Canadian, but even still I suspect that, language difficulties aside, the French Canadian would fit in more comfortably at my family barbeque than the previously mentioned African.
Well said. Many of us need to quit with the cynicism toward “Americanism” We need to rediscover America’s roots and reassert that identity. whites living in the United States are Americans. Enough with “European-American”. “American” is sufficient enough.
The two identities are at a head.
The son must go against the father to prove himself worthy.
America must go against Europe – particularly Britain to consecrate it’s identity.
I agree with the sentiment of this article overall. There certainly is an American identity of “whiteness” that arose both due to the blending of several European ethnicities after multiple generations into a single white American identity AND due to living amongst non-whites who obviously cannot and should not be assimilated through amalgamation or otherwise. Europe still maintains separate white ethnicities (English, French, German, etc.), but it is also likely Europeans will further develop a generic (for lack of better term) whiteness as they are continually placed into close proximity with numerous non-whites who will never be assimilated. The (((oligarchs))) anticipate our eventual displacement, so all white Europeans (not that there is any other kind) also should be united by this common enemy that is working against every one of them. The ideal scenario will see each white ethnicity maintaining its identity and eventually achieving its own ethnostate, although any hope at accomplishing this will require a certain amount of each working together to solve common problems posed by these common enemies and common dangers. If we fail to wake enough of our people in time to the point in which our numbers are so reduced as to have no hope of maintaining every white ethnicity, then banding together to achieve merely a shared white identity could be all that’s left. We must work, sacrifice, and persevere to ensure it doesn’t come to that. I am hopeful given our current trajectory.
I would have to agree with Old World Stock.
The American Identity ceased to exist in a European sense after 1865 with the defeat of the South. From that point on, even though till 1965 or thereabouts the South was able to fight a valiant rearguard action against the purveyors of the disgusting edifice that is modern America today, the northern WASP elite and their Jew allies have always tried to destroy ANY identity with Europe. In fact the first New Englanders were quite explicit about rejecting their European-ness, the Puritanical self-delusion, and self ethnic hatred that they exhibited was quite disgusting and repugnant. It was their descendants that lead negro slave revolts against fellow whites in the south, helped in the abolitionist movement, and pushed for an ethnocidal war against their fellow Anglo-Saxons primarily, who would have left and yet the tyranny that is America and “Democracy” could not allow a better, more Aristocratic, and natural European-style society to exist to outshine their pathetic “City upon a hill” junk… So they than imported Catholic Irishmen whom the WASP’s hated; to do the dirty work for them and fought a war to destroy their fellow Europeans to benefit Jews, Business, and Blacks against their own ethnic kin lest the far off chance the South “might be a puppet for the English or French” god forbid, at least they would have been rekindled with a European tradition, instead of the rejection of it… Only a WASP from New England can come up with the idea of “Radical Reconstruction” thank god sounder heads in the North and Mid-West coupled with the heroism of the South rose up against this sick monstr0sity!!! Sounds familiar today does it not with globalist bullcrap?
When new vital stock of Old World European immigrants arrived in the 1890’s with their strong sense of ethnic kin, pride, and heritage these WASP elites once again went to work against their fellow kin and tried to de-Catholicize them first, than made them ashamed of their European identities forced them to be ‘merican… That is, anti-European, and full of self-loathing, and a worship for mammon as the only “unifying” force for this now bleak and decadent land…
America post 1865 and finally post 1965 has no room for White-European identities, and this tendency was there since the dysfunctional founding in New England of Anglo-Saxon Puritans and all their protestant elite anti-ethnic identity that comes along with it; especially the sick love of the other and contempt for your own Ethnic kin…
We can see this today with the complete and total disgust the American establishment has for Europe as a whole, with Eastern Europe, Russia, in particular, and Iran. Again, the WASP establishment coupled with their Jew allies absolutely can not tolerate ANY country going its own way and that rejects the American sick way of life… (Decadence, self-hate, and the worship of mammon)…
To save America is to rekindle American European identity like the South had. The Southerners new who they were, they prided themselves in it, taught their children racial pride and self-assertion of their ethnic interests first and foremost, recreated a European society with kinship ties to Europe and thrived as a result.
Know who you are, and survive and flourish as a result; rekindle ties with Europe and your spiritual heritage, seek out alliances with ALL Europeans against the non-whites; save your people, save Europe, save America and all the dominions of European brothers as a result!!!
Well, if one is of Teutonic/Germanic ancestors inclusive of those who wandered North. Highly recommend reading “Culture of the Teutons” It’s out there free or cheap for a Kindle edition.
The difference between the “West” brought to the Germanic peoples by way of Rome, was the external from which they derived and created their sense of identity, where the Germanic people derived their self-concept simply from nature, and whatever auspice of within.
My ancestors helped found this Nation. They settled Normandy, conquered England, and have a few streets named after them in Colonial cities.
Even so, I don’t consider myself American, nor do I extend my own culture through appropriation to other whites. It’s not the outside garden that defines who I am, it’s the inner garden, no differently than the encounter of my ancestors and experiencing the natural world instinctively from within.
The problem is that the USA were founded on the ideological grounds that anyone can become an American, in a proposition nation, the land of the free, home of the brave. Even if one assumes that the founding fathers took it for granted that they were talking about white people, whiteness as a cornerstone element can hardy be inserted retrospectively into the Constitution. The American dream after all is universalistic and all-inclusive, despite of what actually works in reality.
Factually and historically speaking, yes, the USA were mostly a white and Christian-puritan/protestant nation, that is also why terms such as African-American or Chinese-American had to be coined for special cases . But American blacks aren’t Africans either, they have a specifically American group identity, admittedly one that is also distinct from white Americans, though there are many overlapping areas.
All this looks a bit different from an European point of view. To us, it cannot be denied that the “Americanisation” of people with different racial background does work to some extent. So Asian, American, Italian, Irish, German, Jewish… Americans appear to us to have common traits, views, social behaviour, consumer habits and overall habitus. There is such a thing as a “homo americanus”, as Tom Sunic put it, who can have almost any ethnic background.
In Europe the historical basis for WN is indeed weaker than in the US; however I think this will increasingly change through further non-white immigration and the globalisation of politics, which maybe will create a bigger sense of white solidarity.
There’s one thing those who want us to “check our white privilege” are in some way right about: Whites notoriously take their whiteness granted like fish do water, and that is why their racial self-consciousness is rather low. Even when they act very xenophiliac and world-embracing, they happen to think naively that everybody is at heart just like them (Americans extend this to other white peoples as well; they think deep inside everybody must be American.) This attitude is very stubborn, seems almost hardwired. And yet, they easily fall for the negative racial self-consciousness of guilt politics…
In 1790 the Immigration and Naturalization Act spelled out that US citizenship was only open to free white people of good character. Yes, “white” people. America was in a way an anti-proposition nation. You could believe what you want, but you had to be white.
I don’t know if you’ve read the book “Our Savage Neighbors” by Peter Silver but he points out that the word “white” used as a euphemism for Europeans was actually started by American Indians. And that the White/Red conflict drove the tendency to de-emphasize ethnic differences amongst Whites as a survival tactic. Something which the Amerinds were much less successful at.
Americans like Richard Spencer are too romanticized of the glorified history of Europe, he brings down his own people when he pushes them away like this.
I have always viewed White Nationalism as you have, Greg – because that is genuinely what I thought it was. White countries for each individual white group and their unique culture and genetics.
Surely there is some spiritual connection between white peoples globally, though? Something connecting them? If not, why do they converse so, why do they work together so, why do they share so, why do they love and care so? Why are we all here?
Why are Asians, Arabs, Mexicans, Africans not here?
There is a time and place to reinforce individual identity, but as we are growing and united as a whole and finally seeing change…is that truly the best time? Borrow a little of the forward thinking that Feminist’s and SJWs use (their idea of a new world) that keeps them going endlessly, and divide amongst past histories another time.
I feel like this is Greece divided against Athens during the impending threat of Persian conquest.
Johnson seems to be conflating identity and ancestry a bit here, in the American context. Cutting to the chase, you can identify as anything under the sun, but a DNA test will tell you what you really are. My ancestry is German, Dutch, English and Scottish. I am Nordic; and that is precisely what a DNA test would confirm.
Your ancestry is not your ethnic identity.
A DNA test will show you the genes of your genotype, i.e., your race in a biological point of view. On the other hand, an ethnic identity is a whole involving culture, history, biological race and territory.
Gentlemen, I assure you, I am quite well aware of the distinction between (ethnic) identity and ancestry. If I weren’t, I most likely wouldn’t have written about them as two (distinct) things being “conflated” in my previous comment, now would I?
Mmm-kay, that obvious point aside, it is my belief that Johnson tends to blend and blur the distinction between these two (yes, I know, distinct) things in his essay because he favors, in America at least, a blending of all the unique ancestries of European-Americans into a solitary “White American” Heinz 57. To this I object. I am a Nordicist!
“he favors, in America at least, a blending of all the unique ancestries of European-Americans into a solitary “White American” Heinz 57. ”
What Greg Johnson actually wrote: ” I completely share our European cousins’ horror at this process of identity erasure. ”
Der Movement marches on.
Canada has no culture or identity.
Don’t be an idiot.
Hey Greg,
This is off-topic but this comment form is the only submission form on the site, and I’m averse to email.
Given that you have a significant voice and platform, through you I wanted to suggest that the alt right bring to the fore the connection between Goldan Sachs and the U.N. Migration Chief / former Goldman Sachs Chief (held these positions simultaneously) Peter Sutherland, in light of today’s Wikileaks documents that have Clinton linking open borders to the interests of Goldman Sachs.
Sutherland was and is one of the most extreme and vocal proponents of flooding Europe with non-Europeans and undermining European nationality, and today’s docs, imo, bridge an important (albeit obvious though before technically unproveable) gap between Goldman Sach’s direct interests and the destruction of Europe.
This will also corrupt the perception of the UN as a legitimate government distinct from the interests of private bankers.
Further context could be added in the form of the State Department email that was leaked a few years ago that linked the multicultural undermining of Franc with “U.S.” interests. This is also on wikileaks.
In sum, this leak seems to complete the loop that connects the bankers interests to the actions of the U.S. government (weaker case in this instance) and the U.N. (a stronger case through Sutherland).
I believe that this particular leak will be of significance going forward, but competently framing the situation going forward and soon is important. This is why I thought to write you.
American Whites certainly have an ethnic identity. That for many of us that American White identity is not rooted in a historical consciousness isbour own fault. Our towns and cities especially on the East coast are steeped in centuries of history. Hell, American White identify has been around so long it has even spawned variants like the Mormons. Of course the Southern White identity is a thing on to itself. Ironically, In the old northern states, where our cultural legacy extends furthest back, is also where we have the most well preseved hyphenated American identities. I don’t see a contradiction wanting to preserve the hyphenated European national-American and a strong American White Identity. I view these things as complimentary. I do realize that many claims to European ethnic identity by American born whites is larding and merely an attempt my say Irish Americans to practice their own escape from whiteness as Sailer calls it. However, the attempts to preserve guinuine White ethnic identities within the larger American White ethnic identify should be supported.
Ethnicity is not nearly as important as race. Collectively, the white race is the world’s minority and given our rapid displacement in our various territories we should be standing together as a united race of people. Ethnicity should only have a minor role in the overall scheme of things. You can still marry a Slavic woman and have beautiful white children. Her ethnicity is mostly irrelevant.
I guess you are totally right, but actually the article is not saying that race doesn’t matter or something like ethnicity is more important than race. It’s about the question of American ethnic identity, not racial, because we all should know that American identity refers to a White identity as a default condition.
There should be no doubt about it.
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