Against ethnonationalism.
Also note that some of the difference is semantic and there is overlap between our positions; for example, I absolutely demand that distinct European peoples and cultures be preserved. I oppose any general panmixia and I oppose the idea that all sovereignty, particularly local, should be taken over by a “super-state.” On the other hand, apparently, real differences exist, so let’s evaluate these differences.
Why should sovereignty reside in ethnostates rather than in more inclusive orders, such as the European Union or the “Imperium” envisioned by Francis Parker Yockey?
It is certainly curious that activists who disagree with Yockey on the single most fundamental aspect of his thought – his Imperium, the title of his most famous book – revere his memory. Certainly, one can revere someone one disagrees with, but the extreme discordance between a most fundamental - indeed existential - disagreement, and the degree of reverence, is unusual. More important, the way that Yockey’s idea is portrayed by the ethnonationalists is a strawman argument. Yockey made it clear in a variety of his works that within his Imperium, European peoples would maintain local sovereignty and maintain their identities. So, the implication that Yockey supported a radical panmixia of Europe’s peoples and cultures is incorrect.
Or, more grandly, the “Eurosiberia” of Jean Thiriart and Guillaume Faye? Or, grander still, the union of the whole Northern Hemisphere, the “Borean alliance” or “Septentrion” of Jean Mabire and Volchock?
The principal benefits attributed to political unification are (1) preventing whites from fighting one another, and (2) protecting whites from other racial and civilizational power blocs like China, India, and the Muslim world.
These are only the “defensive” benefits – the “anti-negative” ones. It ignores the positive, de novo benefits, which I’ll discuss at the end after tackling the arguments against these defensive benefits.
These goals are important, but I think that political unification is not needed to attain them. Beyond that, it entails serious risks of its own.
As I write in my essay “Grandiose Nationalism“:
The essential feature of any scheme of political unification is the transfer of sovereignty from the constituent parts to the new whole. If sovereignty remains with individual states, then one does not have political unification. Instead, one has an “alliance” between states, or a “treaty organization” like NATO, or an “intergovernmental organization” like the United Nations, or an economic “customs union” like the European Common Market, or a hybrid customs union and intergovernmental organization like the European Union.
Why does sovereignty have to be all or nothing? If even Yockey’s Imperium and Lowelll’s Imperium Europa (not mentioned above) would entail some sort of local sovereignty, what’s the point? Why this semantic trick of making the choice between ethnonationalism and a ruthlessly fully integrated monolithic state – unless it is just to shill for ethnonationalism? Even in the USA, individual states retain some local sovereignty – not as much as “states’ rights" advocates would want, but some – does this mean the USA is not in any way politically unified?
As I argue in “Grandiose Nationalism,” political unification is not necessary to prevent whites from fighting one another or to secure whites from external threats:
These aims can be attained through alliances and treaties between sovereign states. A European equivalent of NATO, which provides Europe with a common defense and immigration/emigration policy and mediates conflicts between sovereign member states would be sufficient, and it would have the added value of preserving the cultural and subracial distinctness of different European groups.
The sort of pan-European integration I envision would absolutely preserve “the cultural and subracial distinctness of different European groups” – indeed, that would be one of its guiding principles. The idea that pan-Europeanists favor a destructive panmixia – certainly implied here by contrasting the allegedly preserving properties of ethnonationalism – is a strawman argument I have dissected before, including in essays on Counter-Currents. Then we have the question: how to enforce these “alliances and treaties” on the “sovereign states?” If they can drop out, consistent with their absolute sovereignty, and go their own way – say, forming anti-European alliances with the Colored world – then “alliances and treaties” among Europeans are worthless for long-term policy. Do we coerce them (see below)?
The threat of non-white blocs should not be exaggerated. France, the UK, or Russia alone are militarily strong enough to prevail against anything that Africa, India, or the Muslim world can throw at us — provided, of course, that whites are again morally strong enough to take their own side in a fight. A simple alliance of European states would be able to deter any Chinese aggression. Thus a defensive alliance between European states would be sufficient to preserve Europe from all outside forces, whether they be armed powers or stateless masses of refugees and immigrants.
This is wrong on two counts. First, it assumes that European states can form alliances against outside threats (including a China that has hundreds of millions more people than all Europeans worldwide combined) but that non-Europeans cannot. What if the Colored world decides to form an alliance against Europe? Doesn’t “non-white blocs” actually suggest the sort of dangerous and comprehensive pan-Colored alliance that a “simple alliance” of European states is unlikely to be able to handle long term? What if the clash of civilizations heats up? Is some sort of flimsy “defensive alliance” – consisting of petty nationalists all with their own conflicting agendas – going to be sufficient? Second, this argument is inconsistent with a point made elsewhere in this essay – that if a European ethnostate begins behaving badly, the other states can wage war against it and eliminate that threat. What about “France, the UK, or Russia” – nuclear armed states each of which is strong enough to stand against, according to Greg, a nuclear armed India with its own enormous bigger-than-Europe population? Will Europe’s “defensive alliance” then wage a nuclear war against “France, the UK, or Russia” if those states behave badly? If those states could defeat anything that “Africa, India, or the Muslim world” can throw at them, couldn’t they also defeat – or at least cause catastrophic destruction to - the European “defensive alliance?” You can’t have it both ways.
As for white fratricide: the best way to defuse white ethnic conflicts is not to combat “petty” nationalism but to take it to its logical conclusion. If different ethnic groups yoked to the same system are growing restive, then they should be allowed to go their own ways. Through moving borders and moving peoples, homogeneous ethnostates can be created, in which each self-conscious people can speak its own language and practice its own customs free from outside interference. Such a process could be mediated by a European treaty organization, which could insure that the process is peaceful, orderly, humane, and as fair as possible to all parties.
So, the sovereignty and desires of ethnonationalists will be over-ridden by a “European treaty organization” who will make decisions that would, no doubt, offend the petty nationalist interests (taken to their logical conclusion no doubt!) of individual European peoples. And when you are taking petty nationalism to its logical conclusion, and encouraging ever-increasing distinctions between European peoples, how will you then herd this group of hissing ethno-cats into a “European treaty organization” and force them to abide by its rulings when such rulings go against them? Coercion? Force? Ethnic cleansing?
International crises are by their very nature interruptions in the normal order of things, which also means that their duration is limited, so eventually everything goes back to normal. Military alliances are also shifting and temporary things, but political unification aims at permanence and is very difficult to undo. Does it really make sense to make permanent changes in the political order to deal with unusual and temporary problems?
The clash of civilizations is not temporary. It is existential. The Cold War lasted nearly half a century. NATO, cited above as a sterling example of a “shifting and temporary” alliance, has been in existence since 1949 (!) and is still very much with us. Europeans were so dissatisfied with what NATO gave them that they formed (voluntarily, I might add) the EU. Why did they do that? Do you really believe problems of race and culture are “unusual and temporary?” If so, that is disturbing beyond belief.
The ancient Romans appointed dictators in times of emergency, but only for a limited time, because emergencies are temporary, and a permanent dictatorship is both unnecessary and risky.
Those same Romans who formed an empire, producing Pax Romana.
But what would happen if a sovereign European state signed a treaty to host a gigantic Chinese military base? Or if it fell into the hands of plutocrats who started importing cheap non-white labor? Clearly such policies would endanger all of Europe, therefore, it is not just the business of whatever rogue state adopts those policies. What could the rest of Europe do to stop this? Isn’t this why we need a politically unified Europe?
The answer, of course, is what all sovereign states do when they face existential conflicts of interest: they go to war. Other states would be perfectly justified in declaring war against the rogue state, deposing the offending regime, and ethnically cleansing its territory. But then they would set up a new sovereign regime and go home.
This is perhaps the weakest and most inconsistent part of the ethnonationalist argument. You see, we will respect the sovereignty and independence of European states so much that if a sovereign European state does something we do not like, we’ll go to war against them, depose their government, and ethnically cleanse them! Even Big Europe promoters like Yockey and Mosely would blush at that! Let’s ethnically cleanse fellow Europeans because we cannot reasonably balance the fantasy of “sovereignty” with the realities of global geopolitics! Then we have the question of those wonderfully powerful European states like “France, the UK, and Russia,” who, we are told, could easily make hash of India. Most certainly, nuclear armed European states, steeped in the tradition of petty nationalist sovereignty, will let themselves be invaded, their governments deposed, and their territory ethnically cleansed! No doubt - no doubt! - they would just roll over and take that, with no thermonuclear weapons going off on the European continent. And the ethnonationalists deny that their schemes could ever lead to White fratricide!
The idea that we need European unification to prevent such wars is absurd.
Actually, Greg’s own comment about ethnic cleansing among Europeans – which is in my opinion absurd – is a reasonably good justification for European integration (not absolute unification). If ethnonationalism could possibly lead to intra-European war and ethnic cleansing, I’m all for Imperium.
Again, it makes no sense to make permanent changes to solve temporary problems, and it makes no sense to in effect declare war on all sovereign states today because we might have to declare war on one of them tomorrow.
The problems faced are not temporary (are you serious?) and having Europeans come together voluntarily (the EU was not formed by war, was it?) is not “declaring war on all sovereign states.” The only argument talking about war, deposing governments, and ethnically cleansing Europeans is the ethnonationalist argument I’m responding to. Indeed, that is the petty nationalist mindset behind WWI and WWII.
Political unification is not only unnecessary, it is dangerous, simply because if it fails, it would fail catastrophically. It is not wise to put all one’s eggs in one basket, or to grow only one crop, or to breed a “homogeneous European man,” for when the basket breaks — or blight strikes the potato crop — or a new Spanish flu pandemic breaks out, one is liable to lose everything.
The “eggs in one basket” argument is probably the best one made here against integration, but the same can be said of the nation state. An alliance – even temporary – can be subverted as well. A European Imperium in which the member states meet in a Senate to make decisions would require subversion of the majority of the member states in order for the “basket” to destroy the “eggs.” I’ve never argued for a narrow leadership caste making all decisions for the White world; rather an integrated system of European peoples deciding together.
A politically unified Europe would necessarily be ruled by a small, polyglot elite that is remote from and unresponsive to the provinces and their petty concerns, which they take great pride in denigrating for the greater good.
Necessarily? Unlike those grand ethnonationalists like Churchill and de Gaulle, responsive to their citizens, who moved heaven and earth to prevent their homelands from being flooded with aliens? No, wait…
If that elite became infected by an anti-European memetic virus — or corrupted by alien elites — it would have the power to destroy Europe, and since there would be no sovereign states to say no, nothing short of a revolution could stop them.
See above.
Indeed, the leadership of the present-day European Union is infected by just such a memetic virus, and it is doing all it can to flood Europe with non-whites. The only thing stopping them is the fact that the European Union does not have sovereign power, and stubborn sovereign ethnostates like Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia are saying no.
The EU was not formed on a racial nationalist basis. The idea that individual sovereign European states would not have flooded themselves with non-Whites is disproved by the 20th century history of France and the UK. Why not cite Western Europe instead of the nations of Central and Eastern Europe? Indeed, nation states can be subverted as well, the ethnonationalist solution to which I assume is invasion, deposing governments, and ethnic cleansing.
And again, in my scheme, major decisions would have to be agreed on by the majority of nation states. If a majority of European states can be subverted, then what’s the benefit of sovereignty? The result is the same each way.
Even if a European Union were the only way to stop another Europe-wide war, the terrible truth is that, despite all the losses, Europe managed to recover from the two World Wars.
And set itself on the road to overall racial-culture dispossession and destruction. And what about the terrible dysgenic effects of those wars? Indeed, the entire White world was shattered by the fratricidal conflicts brought to us by petty nationalism.
But it would not recover from race-replacement immigration promoted by a sovereign European Union.
As opposed to the nation-level race-replacement immigration that France and the UK instituted independent of the EU?
Moreover, at a certain point, the EU is going to face a choice. If Poland or Hungary vetoes non-white immigration once and for all, the EU will either have to accept its dissolution or use coercion to hold itself together. In short, the EU may very well cause rather than prevent the next European “brothers’ war.”
The EU is anti-European. And would the EU’s coercion be any different from that which Greg himself advocates above? He himself proposes “brothers’ wars” including ethnic cleansing in order to maintain an unworkable conglomeration of squabbling ethnostates.
A politically unified Europe would eliminate the principle of the equality of sovereign nations under international law. But it would not eliminate the existence of nations.
Hey! I thought we’d all lose our ethnic and cultural distinctiveness. Now we won’t?
And in a common market and political system, certain national groups — principally the Germans — would have systematic advantages and end up on top. This means that a unified Europe would end up being a de facto German empire, since Germany has the largest population and the strongest economy. Does anyone really think that the French or the Poles would relish living under the hegemony of priggish self-loathing German technocrats?
This is wrong on many levels. First, the knee-jerk appeal to crude anti-German sentiment doesn’t bode well for the “love and harmony” that ethonationalism would allegedly bring. Second, why would we expect that a future racial nationalist Europe would have “self-loathing German technocrats?” Isn’t getting rid of such people the whole point, even under ethonationalism? Third, schemes could be put in place to prevent individual nations from dominating the whole. Fourth, what stops a priggish petty nationalist Germany from bullying other ethnonationalist European states? Shall we ethnically cleanse the Germans, then?
Finally, if proponents of European unification hold that it is not really a problem for Greeks and Swedes, Poles and Portuguese to live under a single sovereign state, on what grounds, exactly, are we complaining about multiculturalism and diversity? If the EU can encompass the differences between the Irish and the Greeks, why can’t it encompass the differences between Greeks and Turks, or Greeks and Syrians, etc.?
So now ethnonationalists make anti-racist (or Nordicist) arguments that differences between European groups are at the same level as that between Europeans and non-Europeans. Having those nasty Greeks in the same general polity as you means you must also have Turks and Syrians. After all, what’s the difference, right?
The ethnonationalist vision is of a Europe — and a worldwide European diaspora — of a hundred flags, in which every self-conscious nation has at least one sovereign homeland, each of which will strive for the highest degree of homogeneity, allowing the greatest diversity of cultures, languages, dialects, and institutions to flourish.
And if they misbehave, they will be ethnically cleansed.
Wherever a citizen turns, he will encounter his own flesh and blood, people who speak his language, people whose minds he can understand. Social life will be warm and welcoming, not alienating and unsettling as in multicultural societies.
After all, those Greeks are so alien, that dealing with them is as multicultural as dealing with Syrians! Or Nigerians!
Because citizens will have a strong sense of identity, they will know the difference between their own people and foreigners.
Like the French and British did on their own?
Because they will control their own borders and destinies, they can afford to be hospitable to diplomats, businessmen, tourists, students, and even a few expatriates, who will behave like grateful guests. These ethnostates will be good neighbors to one another, because they have good fences between them and homes to return to when commerce with outsiders becomes tiring.
And depose each other’s governments and cleanse their populations if they exercise their sovereignty too vigorously.
The citizens of these states will be deeply steeped in their mother tongues and local cultures, but they will also be educated in the broader tradition of European high culture. They will all strive for fluency in at least one foreign language. They will appreciate that all Europeans have common roots, common enemies, and a common destiny.
The leadership caste of each ethnostate will be selected to be both deeply rooted in its own homeland but also to have the broadest possible sense of European solidarity. This ethos will allow political cooperation between all European peoples through intergovernmental and treaty organizations, as well as ad hoc alliances. There will be special emphasis in promoting collective ventures in science, technology, national defense, ecological initiatives, and space exploration.
I don’t know – that sounds a lot like the sort of pan-Europeanism, and pan-European integration, I favor. Let the common people preserve their local identities and enjoy local sovereignty, while representatives of the European elite come together in some sort of pan-European Senate, of an Imperium of confederated European-derived states, to deal with the issues at hand.
Thus, I conclude, as promised above, with the positive aspects of integration. First, to promote the idea that “all Europeans have common roots, common enemies, and a common destiny” – an idea that is frankly not very compatible with a mindset that celebrates and promotes ever-increasing levels of micro-distinctiveness among Europeans. Yes, people should be allowed to sort themselves out at the micro-level, and yes, homogeneous regions are best, and yes, local sovereignty will be respected. But there’s a subtle yet crucially important difference between letting people sort themselves out naturally, while promoting the pan-European ideal, as opposed to the scheme in which the highest principle, the raison d'être, of the system is petty nationalist atomization. I instead propose a raison d'être of European unity and cooperation, with local sovereignty being secondary, while Johnson’s essay makes atomization primary and some sort of loose cooperation secondary.
Space exploration and other advanced science/technics, coordination of racial policies/eugenics, promoting the creation of novel and inspiring cultural artifacts, grand construction, and other things of which we may not even yet conceive, would be the positive outcome of a reasonable level of integration, things perhaps not achievable in an ethnonationalist scenario in which the fundamental guiding principle is how different we all are from each other.
Further, if Yockey (he of sainted memory) was right that the organic evolution of the West involves the greater integration of Europe, then those who oppose this integration are guilty of Culture Retardation.
Ethnonationalism wrecked the White world with their world wars and even today, ethnonationalists in Europe obsess over borders, get humiliated in elections, and in the UK, we have a Brexit that despises “Polish plumbers” while embracing Zionists and “Commonwealth” Pakis, West Indians, and Nigerians.
In a phrase: I veto your dream.
Labels: clash of civilizations, Counter Currents, ethnonationalism, EU, fisking, Greg Johnson, pan-European, Yockey
