Foreword to Nationalism: The Politics of Identity

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Keith Woods was full of promise when he first emerged as a YouTube commentator in January of 2019. But in a few short years, he has gone from promising to delivering. From video documentaries to unscripted livestreams and interviews, from highly effective social media posting to live speaking and now to long-form essays, he has excelled at everything he touches.

Woods impresses me because he combines a philosopher’s drive for the biggest possible picture, a journalist’s immersion in current events, and a rhetorician’s eye for the kind of telling details that immediately establish general truths: grains of sand that disclose a whole universe. These excellences are rarely combined in a single individual.

Woods is also a gifted teacher, in part because he is a good learner. Along with intelligence and hard work, he also has the humility necessary for growth. Education requires making mistakes, seeing through them, and leaving them behind. Sometimes that is a difficult and even painful process, especially when one does it in public. But by educating himself in public, Woods has brought a vast and growing audience along with him.

This book is a collection of 15 essays, not a systematic treatise. But there is still a well-elaborated worldview here. Thus, I suggest you read the book from start to finish rather than browsing around.

This book is a defense of ethnic nationalism from its critics on both the Left and the Right. It is particularly useful for demolishing Marxist and Duginist arguments that nationalism is a product of late modernity. (Even if that were true, of course, it is no argument against nationalism, just as it is no argument against antibiotics.)

Woods shows that nationalism is actually quite old. In this respect, I found his essays on ethnopolitics in the Roman and Holy Roman empires to be particularly interesting. Nationalism is ancient because it is ultimately rooted in human nature. Human beings are biologically and culturally diverse, and this diversity is worth preserving. Ethnonationalism is the best way of preserving such diversity and promoting peace among nations.

Also important are Woods’ essays relating ethnonationalism to thinkers about the ideal size of society. Globalization both feeds upon and promotes cultural and political massification and homogenization. Homogenization, of course, is always homogenization “down” to the lowest common denominator. Large-scale political orders also tend toward despotism and technocracy. By contrast, political theorists from Plato and Aristotle to Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Leopold Kohr emphasize that small-scale societies promote virtue, freedom, high culture, and diversity, both biological and cultural.

Another thing Woods gets right is biological race. “Multiculturalism” ironically presupposes that we can harmoniously mix different races in the same society because they aren’t all that different. Race is literally a superficial matter of “skin color.” But if racial differences are more than skin deep, then multiculturalism is doomed to create conflict. I found Woods’ essay on “Racial Thought in Irish Nationalism” to be particularly instructive.

Finally, I am pleased that Woods embraces classical political philosophy, particularly Plato and Aristotle. Classical political philosophy is inherently normative, as opposed to modern political “realism.” Classical republicanism goes beyond sterile debates about elitism vs. populism by embracing both in the idea of a mixed regime. Classical republicanism also offers a third way beyond capitalism and socialism by subordinating private property and enterprise to the common good of society.

Woods has the character and talent for a long and influential career as a nationalist intellectual. But when he looks back at this book after some decades, he will feel proud.

I wish I knew as much about nationalism as Keith Woods when I was in my twenties. I especially wish I had this book when I was young. Spending a few hours reading it would have saved me years of confusion and searching. So read this book and buy copies of it for promising young people.

Nationalism: The Politics of Identity can be purchased here.