In Defense of the White Union
Posted By Asier Abadroa On In North American New Right
[1]Kosovars celebrating their declaration of independence in 2008, the most recent example of a new ethnonationalist nation being born among the white race.
3,745 words
The following is a response to Dr. Johnson’s critique (“Against White Unionism [2]”) of my essay “White Nationalism vs. Racially Conscious White Ethnonationalisms” (Part 1 [3] and Part 2 [4]).
In the initial part of his response, Greg Johnson makes the following statement: “First, a race is not a nation, it is a biological group. To be a nation, a group needs several traits.” Leaving aside for the moment the fact that ethnicity is also a biological group, composed of a homogeneous mixture of sub-races, we must begin by clarifying that “nation” is a concept invented by humans and will therefore always be whatever humans decide to apply that label to.
What is important is to understand that a nation is a collective subject that we consider worthy of being organized as an independent state. Who should be such a subject is an opinion that has been mutating enormously over time and in every region of the world. There was a time when the nation was a nomadic group; at others, it was the descendants of the founders of a single town or city, a group governed by a single leader or King, or a people (according to the likewise variable definition of that word).
Later, the bourgeoisie and capitalism invented the nation-state and its associated civic nationalism, according to which the State preceded the Nation, and has imposed that idea since the French Revolution. Then came Romanticism and the national vision of modern ethnonationalists, which was very much based on language and therefore outdated today, given the discovery of DNA and its determining influence on our Identity. Finally, and especially since the end of the Second World War, a new racial nationalism has begun to emerge that is much more in line with our current scientific knowledge and is based on perfectly measurable statistical criteria.
Requirements to be a nation
The following are the traits that Greg Johnson says a nation must possess in order to be a nation:
- Its people must be biologically related.
- They must also share a common consciousness, meaning primarily a common culture and a common mother tongue.
But of course these requirements are arbitrary. What is being discussed among countless currents both inside and outside our movement is how to decide precisely who nations should be composed of. Thus, it is not so much a matter of finding a definition that coincides more with our idea of nation (which only includes the meaning commonly used by an ordinary citizen, without regard to whether it is logically or etymologically correct) as of objectively justifying the idea that the concept of nation should be based on those requirements that seem to us to be the correct ones.
Even so, the first of the aforementioned requirements, being biologically related, is fulfilled by the Race. It also fulfilled the second requirement at one time, but in any case it is not a problem for racial nationalists, because the “common consciousness” or “feeling of belonging” is created, especially by the Power. At one time, no one doubted that his nation was the polis, or the Kingdom, or the Empire, depending on what the current norm was. And if today civic nationalism is clearly hegemonic, tomorrow we will certainly be able to return the national model to the natural concept of the Race — or create an entirely new one, if we believe there has not been one — as soon as we replace the tribe that today dominates the media.
On the other hand, the second requirement mentioned above becomes impracticable because, in addition to common consciousness, it attempts to lump too many — and totally different — things together. Common consciousness and culture are two independent concepts that do not usually overlap. In fact, if they did, civic nationalism would not exist, and we would not now have the invasion problem we have, because no politician with aspirations to be elected could afford it. One cannot therefore include both within the same requirement. Moreover, culture is multifaceted, and its multiple facets will hardly ever coincide, so the culture requirement in turn demands to be broken down into several cultural aspects. And, after that, it would still be essential to establish an order of priority for each of them, because they will come into contradiction.
Among these cultural aspects, Johnson highlights language — at least insofar as it is the only one he explicitly cites. Of course, this, too, is far from having been a factor of common consciousness throughout history. For example, some of the peoples who have stood out most for their Spanish nationalism, from the birth of the Kingdom until after the last Carlist war and well into the twentieth century, have traditionally been ethnic groups with their own languages. Moreover, there are now thousands of languages in the world, but barely 200 countries. Even leaving aside the additional advantages already cited in my first reply in favor of racial unity, it is far more viable and peaceful to unite countries around Race than to separate them on the basis of language, which mostly does not even overlap with ethnicities, given that they are biological groups.
One law for thee, another for me
For its part, the United States has neither a single ethnicity nor a single culture in common, while sharing a language with other countries. Therefore, if we were to consider that this is what creates nations, then the US would not be a nation, either. But the logical flaws and internal contradictions of “American ethnonationalism” is something that I already dealt with in my first reply, without this point having been answered, so I will not repeat myself here.
[5]You can buy Greg Johnson’s Toward a New Nationalism here [6]
What would the alleged practical application of the two theoretical requirements cited in “Against White Unionism [2]” be in relation to this: “We [Americans] have our own language (American English) and our own culture.”
Note, however, that in reality we are not talking in this case about a language, but about a variant of one, American English, which undermines the idea that is intended to be conveyed about the importance of language as a defining factor. And if the irrelevant differences between modern-day American English and British English were a reason to sustain an American national specificity, then it would also be a reason to consider the popular particularity of modern-day Americans with respect to America’s previous white inhabitants. That is, following this logic, present-day Americans are a different people from the people who inhabited the United States in Thomas Jefferson’s time, and they therefore cannot claim its glories as their own, since the degree of differentiation between early nineteenth-century American English and present-day American English is similar to that between British and American English today.
Moreover, it also completely overlooks the fact that English also has several variants within England (and German within Germany, Spanish within Spain, etc.). For example, according to this criterion the Basque Country would not be one nation, but at least six, since Basque has six major dialectal groups (with their corresponding internal subdivisions!), to the point that the Basque variants of Bizkaia and Zuberoa are barely mutually intelligible and are more different from each other than some recognized languages, and certainly much more different from each other than “American English” from any other kind of English.
Note also that the second part of the sentence attributes to Americans a single culture, as if they did not have several cultures and mentalities, in a country that, if it is known for anything abroad, is for its enormous contrasts. Moreover, there are several territories where secession has strong support, not to mention the fact that there has been a war in the past because of it. To therefore claim that the United States has a single white culture and ethnicity is to display a homogenizing imperialism that denies evident ethno-cultural differences within its territory.
Above all, note the contradiction of method between the two approaches: nationhood is subtly delimited when speaking of language, with a fine brush, pretending that the slightest linguistic variations are a reason for popular distinction, but at the same time, with regard to culture, we proceed in reverse, with a broad brush stroke, attributing to all Americans the same culture.
We see that the ethnonationalist premises are completely arbitrary and are born of the ethnonationalist’s prior preferences. What best demonstrates the falsity of the ethnonationalist concept of nationhood is precisely this double standard and the constant change of focus, jumping from a hyper-detailed extreme to that of a vague and blurred focus, and vice versa: cherry-picking the criteria at the convenience of each ethnonationalist’s wishful thinking to make it coincide with an aprioristic position they had already taken on the subject, probably for emotional reasons which substantially depend on what the hegemonic mass media teaches us.
Also, for this reason ethnonationalism has little of a universal ideology since, unlike racial nationalism, the order of priorities that one ethnonationalism has cannot be extrapolated to others. The criteria that a particular ethnonationalism uses to justify the idea that a given population is a people are not applicable to all other ethnonationalisms. Some of them give more importance to religious factors, others focus more on language, others on the territory of their period of maximum expansion, others on a common past even where there has not yet been a homogeneous mixing of the population, and so on.
Depending on ethnonationalists’ subjective desires, this leads some to set the standard in one place while leading others to set it elsewhere. The result is confrontation between them, one way or the other, since they define the world on the basis of different border lines.
In short, if the nation is “a group that is both biologically related and united by a common consciousness,” then Race can perfectly well be a nation.
As we have seen, however, internal divisions are dramatized or dismissed at will. And that is just the argument used to deny that the Race can be a nation: “A sovereign people can live how they like in their own homeland.” We see recurrent attempts to create a fictitious image of ethnicities as seamless monolithic groups, but the reality is that no ethnicity has a single will. A sovereign people does not have a single voice or will, but also has internal divisions. All concentric circles of Identity have them, for the simple reason that there is no equality in Nature. Even clans have different families, and families have different individuals.
The petty nationalist arguments that Race cannot be a nation because it has genetic and cultural divisions are easily refuted by the method of reductio ad absurdum. Every ethnicity has such internal divisions, therefore they could not be nations, either. And those divisions have in turn other internal subdivisions. In the end, we would come to the conclusion that absolutely nothing can be a nation, given that every single level of identity level has internal divisions.
This ethnonationalist fallacy starts from the assumption that there is only one type of Identity — and that is false. Moreover, it is a dangerous position that always leads inexorably to homogenizing imperialisms.
In reality, there are several equally important consecutive levels, and that is why federalism is precisely the organizational system that best suits the needs of each of them, as opposed to the extreme of the unitary State on the one hand, and the confederal extreme on the other, given that they deny the importance due to the lower and higher identity levels, respectively.
Federal nation and sovereignty
In “Against White Unionism” it is said:
Abadroa imagines a single white state that “grants” local autonomy to distinct peoples to speak their own languages, celebrate their own holidays and heroes, and educate their children to do the same. Of course, existing nations do this by sovereign right. They don’t have to ask anyone’s permission.
And that would be perfectly fine if there were no additional reasons for union, but there are, and they have been outlined in my first rebuttal (in Part 1 [3]). Obviously, no one is supporting the creation of a White Union on the basis of things that don’t need unifying.
Thus, Johnson’s concern is that such internal autonomy for certain issues that fall within more local spheres could be “a status that can be granted or revoked by a central state.” But, logically, this fear is unfounded, given that the starting situation is not that of a single White Nation that has already been created, but the opposite: that of states which will decide to unite under conditions previously agreed among themselves. It would therefore not be the central state’s power to guarantee or revoke rights at each administrative level, but rather they would be established in a common constitution prior to the creation of the Racial Nation. It is easy to establish mechanisms so that there is no tendency toward centralism, nor toward gratuitous disintegration. The latter, in fact, is the case of Spain, where, since the adoption of the Spanish constitution, the only tendency that has persisted is the continual growth of the autonomous powers and the weakening of the central power. Therefore, a unified sovereign state cannot “concentrate” (or “devolve”) its powers at will. It will only depend on what the constitution says.
The aforementioned essay also states that
. . . sovereignty cannot be divided. Sovereign states can delegate their powers to a central government. Or a central sovereign state can devolve powers to local communities. But sovereignty cannot rest in both places.
A person certainly cannot be a nationalist of two nations, because he can only consider himself a part of one nation, but sovereignty, on the other hand, can indeed reside in different subjects depending on the situation. The federal state is an example of sovereignty shared by several collective subjects. That is precisely what federalism consists of.
There are matters that are logically the competence of a specific administrative level. The languages or the traditions and festivities of the various ethnicities cannot be the competence of the central state, just as defense cannot be the competence of its regions or internal federated states. Since the constitution of the White Nation must be established according to a previous pact, none of the levels would be “delegating” or “devolving” powers to any level. Therefore, if the law is well-written, there can be no conflict of competence or occasion for any of the levels to say “no” to another in something that is not among its responsibilities. It does not matter whether the central government “disagrees” with the interior states or vice versa, because each has jurisdiction over different matters, regardless of whether they are considered “important” or not.
[7]You can buy Greg Johnson’s The White Nationalist Manifesto here [8]
Johnson foresees that the law may forget to contemplate some issue, and that “eventually, such conflicts will be settled by force.” If that is true, it is also true at the ethnic level. But the reality is that, in the rare cases where there would be a conflict of powers, it is the courts that would rule on the matter; there would be no essential recourse to war. Besides, federal states are not a historical novelty, and are not an eccentric experiment for which we have no historical experience, and they have always worked well when their members belong to the same race.
Of course, Johnson cites the example of the American Civil War. But the example of the Civil War and Lincoln’s exacerbated imperialism dates far back in time; much has changed in the behavior of human societies since then. And, if the law is not going to be respected, then the same could happen when a superpower loses a minor, albeit “sovereign,” allied state on its borders.
In “Against White Unionism,” it is then asked: “Why would anyone create such an unstable ‘federal’ hybrid?” Some of the reasons for a federal State were already mentioned in my previous essay (in Part 2 [4]), so I will limit myself to saying that some of those “unstable federal hybrids” are countries like Switzerland, Germany, Australia, and Belgium.
It is also said that “the EU is not a sovereign state yet, however, which is why the United Kingdom could leave.” But, again, a constitution previously created by states uniting voluntarily can (and should!) guarantee the right to secede in certain cases, such as on the occasion of some possible change in or renewal of the initially agreed constitution, or upon detecting some dangerous trend concerning the long-term survival of the whole. In fact, the latter was the reason that led the UK to leave the European Union, as the people believed – correctly or not — that some countries’ suicidal tolerance of the ongoing foreign invasion would mean more aliens going to the UK if they remained in the Union than if they exited.
Fewer and fewer old-fashioned nationalists
In his rejoinder, Dr. Johnson says that
Abadroa is simply wrong in asserting that society is trending away from nationalism. The number of sovereign states has increased dramatically in the last century.
Regarding the first sentence, that is not what different polls seem to indicate: people are increasingly less “nationalistic,” have less “national pride,” and are less willing to fight for their country, especially in white countries.[1] [9] In the absence of broadly representative surveys with more specific questions, these criteria may not be perfect, but they are certainly closer to what they are intended to measure than the mere number of states in the world. Moreover, within our movement[2] [10] new generations of racially-conscious whites seem to increasingly tend to regard the white race as their nation, rather than holding to nineteenth-century ethnic nationalisms containing remnants of civic nationalism, which seems to mark a trend.
As for the second sentence, it does not follow. The fact that the number of countries has increased is far from being a reliable criterion for measuring the ethnonationalism of peoples, since it only refers to the cumulative success in seceding states and does not clarify anything about the motivations for secessions, the context in which they occur, or the interests of the international agents involved; not to mention the fact that there are numerous cases of the same ethnic group living in more than one state, such that ethnonationalism would imply a merger and not a partition, as with the unification of dozens of states to create Germany in 1871. There are many more countries today than a century ago, yes, but no one can seriously declare that society today is more nationalistic than in 1914, for example. At that time, even most Communist parties and other internationalist movements supported their respective countries and national governments, if only for fear of losing the favor of their own voters. Today, the situation is radically different, and there is every indication that never before have so many people felt ashamed of their own countries.
Moreover, when a new country is born out of a larger one, it tends to be another artificial, imperialist state just like the state from which it is splitting. This, unfortunately, is a constant in ethnonationalism. Moreover, the new states that are created today usually succeed precisely because they have looked for — and have obtained — the support of some interested superpower such as the US. Take the example of Kosovo, which was proclaimed with much waving of American flags. This case is particularly relevant inasmuch as, even if it has not yet been fully recognized internationally, it is the latest case of a state being born within the white world. Well, guess what: In it there is a border region, northern Kosovo, which is ethnically Serbian and where the population considers Serbia as its country, but the new Kosovar state is not willing to let it go and proudly proclaims its total dominance over the entire region, even on its flag.
Ethnonationalism often only masks an imperialism of a different silhouette. Racial nationalists don’t “want the white race to become a single ethnic group,” given that this is neither possible nor desirable, but ethnonationalists do seem to have such ambitions within their own countries.
This double standard of ethnonationalism, as inconsistent as it is, has its raison d’être: Contrary to what happens in relation to racial differences, inter-ethnic cultural differences are much smaller, and it is possible for the Power to modify them. That is to say, there is no way to force someone to change his race, but within the same race, it is possible to force someone to speak a language and maintain certain external forms that make him visually indistinguishable from the dominant ethnic group. This is why ethnonationalism tends to be imperialistic, centralist, and homogenizing against its own population, especially in a white State as extremely diverse as the US, whose regions have very differing ethnic proportions derived from all European backgrounds.
Furthermore, there is another reason why cultural ethnonationalism is inherently imperialistic in the bad sense of the word: genetics, language, religion, customs, literary culture, etc. are aspects that not only change over time, but that change at different paces, so there is never going to be a monolithic ethnicity without the existence of a tyrannical regime to implement its forced homogenization.
As White Nationalists, we need to definitively get rid of the residues of the systemic civic nationalism in which we have been educated and focus only on the genetic, which is what shapes everything else and is the only thing we cannot ignore.
Strategically, it will be necessary to distinguish between Ideals and stages. Doctrinally, it will be necessary to differentiate between Identity and culture.
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Notes
[1] [12] The percentage of Americans who are extremely proud of their country is at an all-time low: https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2022/06/29/proud-to-be-an-american-record-low-number-say-theyre-extremely-proud/?sh=1caff8ee7a5e [13]. Increasingly, the United States is struggling to fill vacancies in its army: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/01/12/report-army-finding-it-difficult-to-recruit-soldiers-hopes-bonuses-help/ [14]. Only 25% of the population in Western Europe is willing to fight for their country: https://www.gallup-international.bg/en/33483/win-gallup-internationals-global-survey-shows-three-in-five-willing-to-fight-for-their-country/ [15]. Although no one can deny that White Nationalism is surging, “[t]he Wall Street Journal/NORC survey found that just 38% of Americans say patriotism is ‘very important’ to them, down from 70% who said the same in 1998”: https://nypost.com/2023/03/27/values-like-patriotism-religion-falling-out-of-favor-among-americans-poll/ [16]
[2] [17] The results of the polls conducted by Gaddius Maximus among his white racialist followers was that 77% Americans respondents claimed to be European in his Telegram poll (https://t.me/buildingathirdforce/2734 [18]), and 66% in his Twitter one (https://twitter.com/gaddiusmaximus/status/1632465581407346689?s=46&t=HBbq7UGqRJTgr3GB5CqJmQ [19]). (Among non-Americans, the poll produced similar results in agreement with the Europeanness of Americans.) The fact that Gaddius himself is in favor of the opposite position only affirms the results’ reliability.