Us and Them
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Summary: Americans generally belittle the role of ethnic nationalism in politics. But in fact, it corresponds to some enduring propensities of the human spirit, it is galvanized by modernization, and in one form or another, it will drive global politics for generations to come. Once ethnic nationalism has captured the imagination of groups in a multiethnic society, ethnic disaggregation or partition is often the least bad answer.
Projecting their own experience onto the rest of the world, Americans generally belittle the role of ethnic nationalism in politics. After all, in the United States people of varying ethnic origins live cheek by jowl in relative peace. Within two or three generations of immigration, their ethnic identities are attenuated by cultural assimilation and intermarriage. Surely, things cannot be so different elsewhere.
Americans also find ethnonationalism discomfiting both intellectually and morally. Social scientists go to great lengths to demonstrate that it is a product not of nature but of culture, often deliberately constructed. And ethicists scorn value systems based on narrow group identities rather than cosmopolitanism.
But none of this will make ethnonationalism go away. Immigrants to the United States usually arrive with a willingness to fit into their new country and reshape their identities accordingly. But for those who remain behind in lands where their ancestors have lived for generations, if not centuries, political identities often take ethnic form, producing competing communal claims to political power. The creation of a peaceful regional order of nation-states has usually been the product of a violent process of ethnic separation. In areas where that separation has not yet occurred, politics is apt to remain ugly.
A familiar and influential narrative of twentieth-century European history argues that nationalism twice led to war, in 1914 and then again in 1939. Thereafter, the story goes, Europeans concluded that nationalism was a danger and gradually abandoned it. In the postwar decades, western Europeans enmeshed themselves in a web of transnational institutions, culminating in the European Union (EU). After the fall of the Soviet empire, that transnational framework spread eastward to encompass most of the continent. Europeans entered a postnational era, which was not only a good thing in itself but also a model for other regions. Nationalism, in this view, had been a tragic detour on the road to a peaceful liberal democratic order.
This story is widely believed by educated Europeans and even more so, perhaps, by educated Americans. {snip}
Yet the experience of the hundreds of Africans and Asians who perish each year trying to get into Europe by landing on the coast of Spain or Italy reveals that Europe’s frontiers are not so open. And a survey would show that whereas in 1900 there were many states in Europe without a single overwhelmingly dominant nationality, by 2007 there were only two, and one of those, Belgium, was close to breaking up. Aside from Switzerland, in other words—where the domestic ethnic balance of power is protected by strict citizenship laws—in Europe the “separatist project” has not so much vanished as triumphed.
Far from having been superannuated in 1945, in many respects ethnonationalism was at its apogee in the years immediately after World War II. European stability during the Cold War era was in fact due partly to the widespread fulfillment of the ethnonationalist project. And since the end of the Cold War, ethnonationalism has continued to reshape European borders.
In short, ethnonationalism has played a more profound and lasting role in modern history than is commonly understood, and the processes that led to the dominance of the ethnonational state and the separation of ethnic groups in Europe are likely to reoccur elsewhere. Increased urbanization, literacy, and political mobilization; differences in the fertility rates and economic performance of various ethnic groups; and immigration will challenge the internal structure of states as well as their borders. Whether politically correct or not, ethnonationalism will continue to shape the world in the twenty-first century.
THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY
There are two major ways of thinking about national identity. One is that all people who live within a country’s borders are part of the nation, regardless of their ethnic, racial, or religious origins. This liberal or civic nationalism is the conception with which contemporary Americans are most likely to identify. But the liberal view has competed with and often lost out to a different view, that of ethnonationalism. The core of the ethnonationalist idea is that nations are defined by a shared heritage, which usually includes a common language, a common faith, and a common ethnic ancestry.
{snip}
Ethnonationalism draws much of its emotive power from the notion that the members of a nation are part of an extended family, ultimately united by ties of blood. It is the subjective belief in the reality of a common “we” that counts. The markers that distinguish the in-group vary from case to case and time to time, and the subjective nature of the communal boundaries has led some to discount their practical significance. But as Walker Connor, an astute student of nationalism, has noted, “It is not what is, but what people believe is that has behavioral consequences.” And the central tenets of ethnonationalist belief are that nations exist, that each nation ought to have its own state, and that each state should be made up of the members of a single nation.
{snip}
THE RISE OF ETHNONATIONALISM
Today, people tend to take the nation-state for granted as the natural form of political association and regard empires as anomalies. But over the broad sweep of recorded history, the opposite is closer to the truth. Most people at most times have lived in empires, with the nation-state the exception rather than the rule. So what triggered the change?
The rise of ethnonationalism, as the sociologist Ernest Gellner has explained, was not some strange historical mistake; rather, it was propelled by some of the deepest currents of modernity. Military competition between states created a demand for expanded state resources and hence continual economic growth. Economic growth, in turn, depended on mass literacy and easy communication, spurring policies to promote education and a common language—which led directly to conflicts over language and communal opportunities.
Modern societies are premised on the egalitarian notion that in theory, at least, anyone can aspire to any economic position. But in practice, everyone does not have an equal likelihood of upward economic mobility, and not simply because individuals have different innate capabilities. For such advances depend in part on what economists call “cultural capital,” the skills and behavioral patterns that help individuals and groups succeed. Groups with traditions of literacy and engagement in commerce tend to excel, for example, whereas those without such traditions tend to lag behind.
{snip}
Ethnonationalism had a psychological basis as well as an economic one. By creating a new and direct relationship between individuals and the government, the rise of the modern state weakened individuals’ traditional bonds to intermediate social units, such as the family, the clan, the guild, and the church. And by spurring social and geographic mobility and a self-help mentality, the rise of market-based economies did the same. The result was an emotional vacuum that was often filled by new forms of identification, often along ethnic lines.
Ethnonationalist ideology called for a congruence between the state and the ethnically defined nation, with explosive results. {snip}
THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION
Nineteenth-century liberals, like many proponents of globalization today, believed that the spread of international commerce would lead people to recognize the mutual benefits that could come from peace and trade, both within polities and between them. Socialists agreed, although they believed that harmony would come only after the arrival of socialism. Yet that was not the course that twentieth-century history was destined to follow. The process of “making the state and the nation commensurate” took a variety of forms, from voluntary emigration (often motivated by governmental discrimination against minority ethnicities) to forced deportation (also known as “population transfer”) to genocide. Although the term “ethnic cleansing” has come into English usage only recently, its verbal correlates in Czech, French, German, and Polish go back much further. Much of the history of twentieth-century Europe, in fact, has been a painful, drawn-out process of ethnic disaggregation.
Massive ethnic disaggregation began on Europe’s frontiers. In the ethnically mixed Balkans, wars to expand the nation-states of Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia at the expense of the ailing Ottoman Empire were accompanied by ferocious interethnic violence. During the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, almost half a million people left their traditional homelands, either voluntarily or by force. Muslims left regions under the control of Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbs; Bulgarians abandoned Greek-controlled areas of Macedonia; Greeks fled from regions of Macedonia ceded to Bulgaria and Serbia.
World War I led to the demise of the three great turn-of-the-century empires, unleashing an explosion of ethnonationalism in the process. In the Ottoman Empire, mass deportations and murder during the war took the lives of a million members of the local Armenian minority in an early attempt at ethnic cleansing, if not genocide. In 1919, the Greek government invaded the area that would become Turkey, seeking to carve out a “greater Greece” stretching all the way to Constantinople. Meeting with initial success, the Greek forces looted and burned villages in an effort to drive out the region’s ethnic Turks. But Turkish forces eventually regrouped and pushed the Greek army back, engaging in their own ethnic cleansing against local Greeks along the way. Then the process of population transfers was formalized in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne: all ethnic Greeks were to go to Greece, all Greek Muslims to Turkey. In the end, Turkey expelled almost 1.5 million people, and Greece expelled almost 400,000.
Out of the breakup of the Hapsburg and Romanov empires emerged a multitude of new countries. Many conceived of themselves as ethnonational polities, in which the state existed to protect and promote the dominant ethnic group. Yet of central and eastern Europe’s roughly 60 million people, 25 million continued to be part of ethnic minorities in the countries in which they lived. In most cases, the ethnic majority did not believe in trying to help minorities assimilate, nor were the minorities always eager to do so themselves. Nationalist governments openly discriminated in favor of the dominant community. Government activities were conducted solely in the language of the majority, and the civil service was reserved for those who spoke it.
{snip}
POSTWAR BUT NOT POSTNATIONAL
One might have expected that the Nazi regime’s deadly policies and crushing defeat would mark the end of the ethnonationalist era. But in fact they set the stage for another massive round of ethnonational transformation. The political settlement in central Europe after World War I had been achieved primarily by moving borders to align them with populations. After World War II, it was the populations that moved instead. Millions of people were expelled from their homes and countries, with at least the tacit support of the victorious Allies.
Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin all concluded that the expulsion of ethnic Germans from non-German countries was a prerequisite to a stable postwar order. As Churchill put it in a speech to the British parliament in December 1944, “Expulsion is the method which, so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble. . . . A clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed at the prospect of the disentanglement of population, nor am I alarmed by these large transferences.” He cited the Treaty of Lausanne as a precedent, showing how even the leaders of liberal democracies had concluded that only radically illiberal measures would eliminate the causes of ethnonational aspirations and aggression.
Between 1944 and 1945, five million ethnic Germans from the eastern parts of the German Reich fled westward to escape the conquering Red Army, which was energetically raping and massacring its way to Berlin. Then, between 1945 and 1947, the new postliberation regimes in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia expelled another seven million Germans in response to their collaboration with the Nazis. Together, these measures constituted the largest forced population movement in European history, with hundreds of thousands of people dying along the way.
The handful of Jews who survived the war and returned to their homes in eastern Europe met with so much anti-Semitism that most chose to leave for good. About 220,000 of them made their way into the American-occupied zone of Germany, from which most eventually went to Israel or the United States. Jews thus essentially vanished from central and eastern Europe, which had been the center of Jewish life since the sixteenth century.
Millions of refugees from other ethnic groups were also evicted from their homes and resettled after the war. This was due partly to the fact that the borders of the Soviet Union had moved westward, into what had once been Poland, while the borders of Poland also moved westward, into what had once been Germany. To make populations correspond to the new borders, 1.5 million Poles living in areas that were now part of the Soviet Union were deported to Poland, and 500,000 ethnic Ukrainians who had been living in Poland were sent to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Yet another exchange of populations took place between Czechoslovakia and Hungary, with Slovaks transferred out of Hungary and Magyars sent away from Czechoslovakia. A smaller number of Magyars also moved to Hungary from Yugoslavia, with Serbs and Croats moving in the opposite direction.
As a result of this massive process of ethnic unmixing, the ethnonationalist ideal was largely realized: for the most part, each nation in Europe had its own state, and each state was made up almost exclusively of a single ethnic nationality. During the Cold War, the few exceptions to this rule included Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. But these countries’ subsequent fate only demonstrated the ongoing vitality of ethnonationalism. After the fall of communism, East and West Germany were unified with remarkable rapidity, Czechoslovakia split peacefully into Czech and Slovak republics, and the Soviet Union broke apart into a variety of different national units. Since then, ethnic Russian minorities in many of the post-Soviet states have gradually immigrated to Russia, Magyars in Romania have moved to Hungary, and the few remaining ethnic Germans in Russia have largely gone to Germany. A million people of Jewish origin from the former Soviet Union have made their way to Israel. Yugoslavia saw the secession of Croatia and Slovenia and then descended into ethnonational wars over Bosnia and Kosovo.
The breakup of Yugoslavia was simply the last act of a long play. But the plot of that play—the disaggregation of peoples and the triumph of ethnonationalism in modern Europe—is rarely recognized, and so a story whose significance is comparable to the spread of democracy or capitalism remains largely unknown and unappreciated.
DECOLONIZATION AND AFTER
The effects of ethnonationalism, of course, have hardly been confined to Europe. For much of the developing world, decolonization has meant ethnic disaggregation through the exchange or expulsion of local minorities.
The end of the British Raj in 1947 brought about the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan, along with an orgy of violence that took hundreds of thousands of lives. Fifteen million people became refugees, including Muslims who went to Pakistan and Hindus who went to India. Then, in 1971, Pakistan itself, originally unified on the basis of religion, dissolved into Urdu-speaking Pakistan and Bengali-speaking Bangladesh.
{snip}
THE BALANCE SHEET
Analysts of ethnic disaggregation typically focus on its destructive effects, which is understandable given the direct human suffering it has often entailed. But such attitudes can yield a distorted perspective by overlooking the less obvious costs and also the important benefits that ethnic separation has brought.
Economists from Adam Smith onward, for example, have argued that the efficiencies of competitive markets tend to increase with the markets’ size. The dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire into smaller nation-states, each with its own barriers to trade, was thus economically irrational and contributed to the region’s travails in the interwar period. Much of subsequent European history has involved attempts to overcome this and other economic fragmentation, culminating in the EU.
Ethnic disaggregation also seems to have deleterious effects on cultural vitality. Precisely because most of their citizens share a common cultural and linguistic heritage, the homogenized states of postwar Europe have tended to be more culturally insular than their demographically diverse predecessors. With few Jews in Europe and few Germans in Prague, that is, there are fewer Franz Kafkas.
Forced migrations generally penalize the expelling countries and reward the receiving ones. Expulsion is often driven by a majority group’s resentment of a minority group’s success, on the mistaken assumption that achievement is a zero-sum game. But countries that got rid of their Armenians, Germans, Greeks, Jews, and other successful minorities deprived themselves of some of their most talented citizens, who simply took their skills and knowledge elsewhere. And in many places, the triumph of ethnonational politics has meant the victory of traditionally rural groups over more urbanized ones, which possess just those skills desirable in an advanced industrial economy.
But if ethnonationalism has frequently led to tension and conflict, it has also proved to be a source of cohesion and stability. When French textbooks began with “Our ancestors the Gauls” or when Churchill spoke to wartime audiences of “this island race,” they appealed to ethnonationalist sensibilities as a source of mutual trust and sacrifice. Liberal democracy and ethnic homogeneity are not only compatible; they can be complementary.
One could argue that Europe has been so harmonious since World War II not because of the failure of ethnic nationalism but because of its success, which removed some of the greatest sources of conflict both within and between countries. The fact that ethnic and state boundaries now largely coincide has meant that there are fewer disputes over borders or expatriate communities, leading to the most stable territorial configuration in European history.
{snip}
NEW ETHNIC MIXING
Along with the process of forced ethnic disaggregation over the last two centuries, there has also been a process of ethnic mixing brought about by voluntary emigration. The general pattern has been one of emigration from poor, stagnant areas to richer and more dynamic ones.
In Europe, this has meant primarily movement west and north, leading above all to France and the United Kingdom. This pattern has continued into the present: as a result of recent migration, for example, there are now half a million Poles in Great Britain and 200,000 in Ireland. Immigrants from one part of Europe who have moved to another and ended up staying there have tended to assimilate and, despite some grumbling about a supposed invasion of “Polish plumbers,” have created few significant problems.
The most dramatic transformation of European ethnic balances in recent decades has come from the immigration of people of Asian, African, and Middle Eastern origin, and here the results have been mixed. Some of these groups have achieved remarkable success, such as the Indian Hindus who have come to the United Kingdom. But in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere, on balance the educational and economic progress of Muslim immigrants has been more limited and their cultural alienation greater.
{snip}
As a result, some of the traditional contours of European politics have been upended. The left, for example, has tended to embrace immigration in the name of egalitarianism and multiculturalism. But if there is indeed a link between ethnic homogeneity and a population’s willingness to support generous income-redistribution programs, the encouragement of a more heterogeneous society may end up undermining the left’s broader political agenda. And some of Europe’s libertarian cultural propensities have already clashed with the cultural illiberalism of some of the new immigrant communities.
Should Muslim immigrants not assimilate and instead develop a strong communal identification along religious lines, one consequence might be a resurgence of traditional ethnonational identities in some states—or the development of a new European identity defined partly in contradistinction to Islam (with the widespread resistance to the extension of full EU membership to Turkey being a possible harbinger of such a shift).
FUTURE IMPLICATIONS
Since ethnonationalism is a direct consequence of key elements of modernization, it is likely to gain ground in societies undergoing such a process. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that it remains among the most vital—and most disruptive—forces in many parts of the contemporary world.
More or less subtle forms of ethnonationalism, for example, are ubiquitous in immigration policy around the globe. Many countries—including Armenia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Serbia, and Turkey—provide automatic or rapid citizenship to the members of diasporas of their own dominant ethnic group, if desired. {snip}
Increasing communal consciousness and shifting ethnic balances are bound to have a variety of consequences, both within and between states, in the years to come. As economic globalization brings more states into the global economy, for example, the first fruits of that process will often fall to those ethnic groups best positioned by history or culture to take advantage of the new opportunities for enrichment, deepening social cleavages rather than filling them in. Wealthier and higher-achieving regions might try to separate themselves from poorer and lower-achieving ones, and distinctive homogeneous areas might try to acquire sovereignty—courses of action that might provoke violent responses from defenders of the status quo.
Of course, there are multiethnic societies in which ethnic consciousness remains weak, and even a more strongly developed sense of ethnicity may lead to political claims short of sovereignty. {snip}. And as scholars such as Chaim Kaufmann have noted, once ethnic antagonism has crossed a certain threshold of violence, maintaining the rival groups within a single polity becomes far more difficult.
This unfortunate reality creates dilemmas for advocates of humanitarian intervention in such conflicts, because making and keeping peace between groups that have come to hate and fear one another is likely to require costly ongoing military missions rather than relatively cheap temporary ones. When communal violence escalates to ethnic cleansing, moreover, the return of large numbers of refugees to their place of origin after a cease-fire has been reached is often impractical and even undesirable, for it merely sets the stage for a further round of conflict down the road.
Partition may thus be the most humane lasting solution to such intense communal conflicts. It inevitably creates new flows of refugees, but at least it deals with the problem at issue. The challenge for the international community in such cases is to separate communities in the most humane manner possible: by aiding in transport, assuring citizenship rights in the new homeland, and providing financial aid for resettlement and economic absorption. The bill for all of this will be huge, but it will rarely be greater than the material costs of interjecting and maintaining a foreign military presence large enough to pacify the rival ethnic combatants or the moral cost of doing nothing.
{snip}
(Posted on March 10, 2008)
Comments
Americans also find ethnonationalism discomfiting both intellectually and morally.
Really? Which “Americans” are they talking about? Perhaps they mean the “Americans” that comprise the social circles of CFR members (“Foreign Affairs” is the CFR’s official publication), but out here in the hinterlands that CFR-types scorn at, ethnonationalism (as well as other kinds of nationalism) are necessary for the social stability and prosperity of the average person.
Immigrants to the United States usually arrive with a willingness to fit into their new country and reshape their identities accordingly.
That was true in the 19th and early 20th century, but post-1965 immigration means that the new immigrants don’t come to fit into American and reshape themselves around America, but just the opposite — they expect America to reshape itself around them, and traditional Americans to pander to their ways. Of course, older waves of immigration were virtually all white, while post-1965 was mostly non-white.
Posted by St. Louis CofCC Blogmeister at 6:05 PM on March 10
Is the color of crime enough antagonism to partition the United States yet? After all whites have lost more to black murderers than Bosnia ever lost in its WAR against serbia.
Posted by Diamed at 6:17 PM on March 10
“The most dramatic transformation… has come from the immigration of people of Asian, African, and Middle Eastern origin, and here the results have been mixed. Some of these groups have achieved remarkable success, such as the Indian Hindus who have come to the United Kingdom. But in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere…”
That paragraph certainly came from out of the blue. Why, this is the first time the author’s discussed the ‘limited progress’ of any particular population… This next quote sounded even more odd to me, “Should Muslim immigrants not assimilate and instead develop a strong communal identification along religious lines…”. Should Muslims not assimilate? Where has this author been? No group is being forced to assimilate, or to accommodate, except for whites.
“The dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire into smaller nation-states, each with its own barriers to trade, was thus economically irrational and contributed to the region’s travails in the interwar period.”
As someone who lived in Europe for a time, but is really uneducated about the matter, I would have to say this statement held true even up until the EU formed. It really looked like each country in Europe tried to raise tariffs against each of the others for the benefit of their own population. Of course, there was an East-West Europe, and South-North Europe, dynamic going on too.
Posted by Dr. Smith at 6:21 PM on March 10
I don’t think “ethnonationalism” is strictly a result of “modernization.” The form ethnonationalism took in the last 2-3 centuries may have been shaped by modernization, but the seeds of the phenomenon clearly go much further back.
Any study of population genetics will tell you that. Even if the geneticist himself is too timid to admit it.
I mean, how else did races and ethnic groups come into being?
Ethnic nepotism has to be hardwired in us (and them).
Posted by James at 6:45 PM on March 10
“But if there is indeed a link between ethnic homogeneity and a population’s willingness to support generous income-redistribution programs, the encouragement of a more heterogeneous society may end up undermining the left’s broader political agenda.”
It seems to me that many elements of massive third world immigration threaten the left’s agenda. If things continue at the current pace, the left’s beloved welfare state will crumble and freedom of speech, women’s rights, gay rights, religious freedom, etc. (all things supposedly dear to liberals) will disappear beneath a wave of Sharia law. To date the only leftist who seemed to have understood this was Pim Fortuyn; the rest of the left seems clueless. Apparently, for many, giving up everything they have fought for is favorable to being called a “racist” (a fate worth than death). Of course, many on the right seem to share this fear. Left and right are beginnning to not matter anymore. All that matters is nationalist v. multiculturalist. And, unless we on the left and right put our policy differences aside and work together, we will both lose.
Posted by Conrad R. at 6:49 PM on March 10
After all, in the United States people of varying ethnic origins live cheek by jowl in relative peace.
Substitute “racial” for “ethnic,” and this sentence would be a punchline.
Posted by St. Louis CofCC Blogmeister at 6:50 PM on March 10
I can’t believe this was in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, the journal of Liberal, Democratic Globalists. Or as they like to call themselves, Progressives, as compared to Retards which they probably call Traditionalists behind their backs. That the idea of ethnic identity and organizing politically around it is presented in a positive light is amazing. Is the tide turning? Or is this a lone voice crying in the wilderness? What does this mean for the United States? Hopefully, the beginning of the end of this multiculturalism nonsense and a return to sane immigration and assimilation policies. Or is it the beginning of the justification for the break up of the United States based on demographics? A breakup the globalists must be rubbing their hands in glee over. A reconquista of Atzland perhaps? Ah, and what does this do for the social tensions due to slavery and the call for reparations? Perhaps a population transfer? After all it has been suggested in Foreign Affairs as the most humane and permanent solution. Maybe the UN could get involved and provide some planes and boats. The Neo-Confederates shall be happy. The South will rise again.
Posted by Why at 8:32 PM on March 10
More nonsense from Foreign Entanglements….er, I mean Foreign Affairs.
Posted by Bannister at 8:56 PM on March 10
Nice, but I can’t help wondering if this isn’t a giant exercise promoting the authors ‘racism’. Enough with using the term ‘multiculturalism’, too. He uses the term multiculturalism over and over. In the interest of accuracy call it what it really is: whitey-hate.
Posted by at 9:29 PM on March 10
This guy has no idea just how much brainwashing was required just to get white ethnics to get along. We can add to that TWO World Wars and a Cold War.
The tools of indoctrination and control have increased geometrically since the turn of last century. And, still, the country is more balkanized that at any other time in its history. The future doesn’t look bright.
So, Muller and “Grand” CFR pals, who have been one of the, if not THE, major driving force behind the racial transformation of America better start packing their bags because if all hell breaks loose I’m afraid their heads will be among the first on the chopping block
Posted by Robespierre at 10:13 PM on March 10
Seemed like a balanced article to me. They acknowledge that ethnic homogenity has its plus side. They acknowledge also, that in many cases, to reach that, minorities are expelled to the detriment of the host country (a possible example, depending on your view of history is Jews from Europe) After all, many of the people working on the Manhattan project were Jews.
I dont see what everyone is so uptight about. Yes, they dont mention the horrible toll of Blacks - but how many mainstream articles even go as far as this one did?
Posted by at 10:43 PM on March 10
someone mentioned that Foreign affairs is generally geared towards democratic globalists. Besides American Conservative and Chronicles magazine, does anyone have any recommendations of good realistic/conservative journals, magazines or publications?
Posted by at 11:45 PM on March 10
“After all, in the United State people of varying ethnic groups live cheak by jowl in relative peace.”
Oh yeah? Since when? After 9/11? Sometime after Hurricane Katrina? What about 2006? …2007? Maybe if we ignore black-on-white crime statistics.
You know, I used to think of the CFR as rather nasty but intelligent bunch of brutal opportunists, bent on constructing a “world state,” (or whatever) with no interest in anyone or anything other than themselves and the corporate masters they serve.
Lately, however, I’m beginning to think they are something much worse. A pack of brain dead, neoliberal megalomaniacs who have absolutely no idea what is going on in the world. Most of all when it involves “their own” country.
Posted by "Grand Ethno-Strategist" at 12:08 AM on March 11
To St. Louis CofCC Blogmeister
Very well said!
The only “groups” which have successfully assimilated here are the europeans. It is european immigrants who share a culture and history and concepts such as the rule of law. Non-whites have no such common culture or history and publications such as The Color of Crime show just how much they believe in the rule of law.
With the seeming demise of the modern nation state, what will replace it if not ethnic identity? A world in which international borders fall is a world in which ethnic interests predominate. The crusade of the left has always been for the ultimate destruction of the US as a european derived civilization and they are being quite successful.
Every time I hear some leftist complain about how third world illegals are mistreated or about how we must be more “inclusive” I know what he is saying, viz. Western civilization does not deserve to exist; let us destroy it. A wonderful example of such double speak is the movement to remove the confederate flag from public forums(who knows, the next step may be to make it illegal to have a confederate flag in one’s house). The not so subtle message is always “America is evil”, we must expunge its racist history, we must rewrite history to include the contributions of non-whites, the eternal victims. Sam Francis was right when he said that the attack on the confederate flag was an attack on traditional America.
Posted by at 8:21 AM on March 11
He often uses the term ‘multiculturalism’. What multiculturalism really means in the West, when put into practice, is hatred of whites.
What are the policies, what does it mean when a Western nation embraces ‘multiculturalism’ or ‘diversity’? What are the real results in every real workplace, university, or school that celebrates or promises ‘diversity’? Does it mean people of color will be encouraged to think it racial terms and will be reported on in racial terms, while whites will be their racists? Does it mean discrimination against whites in every school, university, and workplace that practices ‘multiculturalsim’? Does it mean non-whites accredited and speaking out and whites being silenced?
Substitute in the word anti-white, or anti-white hatred, in each instance where the media or a text-book uses the term ‘multiculturalism’.
What we need to have is a little bit of honesty, and to face some part of reality. Get the simple things right, and there’s no need for a 10,000 page essay that may, or may not be promoting the authors ‘racism’.
Posted by at 10:51 AM on March 11
This writer doesn’t seem to understand the difference between a race and an ethnic group. And how genetic relatedness can factor in to racial/ethnic conflict/cooperation.
It’s true that Italians and Slavs “assimilated” into the “Anglo-Protestant” core of the country. It is not true, however, that blacks, mestizos, and other non-whites (minus a few Asians) ever did to any significant degree nor have they shown any sign that they ever will.
Posted by Cecil Rhodes at 12:23 PM on March 11
Something I picked from someone is that multi-cult and diversity is a reject idea from 1960’s radicals. And it’s a relatively new idea. Human beings have known for centuries, millinea, that multi-cult and diversity does not work. So why do people think it’ll suddenly work like magic?
Another point to consider is that our grand-parents and great-grand parents weren’t bad people. And they weren’t ignorant either. Many of them were light years better in social situations than today’s population of TV, cellphone talking mush heads. That said, they understood there needed to be barriers in society. Our ancestors understood mixing races on a wide scale would cause trouble.
Posted by RealityCheck at 3:06 PM on March 11
Invasion, armed or otherwise, is still invasion. Treason, for profit or ideology, is still treason. Foreign colonization, via cultural imperialism or otherwise, is still foreign colonization. Insurrection, revolution or armed revolt to reverse all of the above is still a viable and necessary option. Gentlemen, the fifth columnists have thrown open the gates and our defenses are being overrun. The time has come to roll up our sleeves and unleash the dogs of war upon those who are invading and colonizing our nation…
Posted by at 4:40 PM on March 11
It’s only “us and them” for people who think solely along color lines. It’s 2008, not 1938. Time to enter the 21st century along with the rest of us, folks.
Posted by WhiteLiberal at 8:41 PM on March 12
It’s only “us and them” for people who think solely along color lines. It’s 2008, not 1938. Time to enter the 21st century along with the rest of us, folks.
Posted by WhiteLiberal at 8:41 PM on March 12
What’s your point? Your line of thinking is better than those of us that are White Nationalists? Our message is more relevant today than in any other time in our history.
Posted by at 8:19 PM on March 13