I like your four metrics, but should they be equally weighted? Number 2 implies that "white nationalism" is so rare it should be considered a trivial abnormality. That's my observation, by the way. I travel a lot. I have employed lots of white cowboys. I have never met or even heard of someone who met a "white nationalist." That doesn't mean they don't exist, but I believe people who really want to make America "all white" are uncommonly rare.
I am not trying to be a troll, but I actually have no idea of what the term “White Nationalism” even means.
Based on a literal translation, it should mean the unification of all genetic Europeans into one big nation. This would effectively erase all separate European and Anglo nations.
As far as I know, virtually no one advocates this.
I have to admit, I no longer have any idea what people mean when they use that term, either. Whether that is because I am just not understanding some core principle of the term nationalism, or everyone uses "white nationalism" somewhat differently and in a non-specific manner, I just don't know.
I agree. I suspect what they really mean is white tribalism, where the white majority of majority white nations favor keeping their majority racial makeup, resisting attempts at The Great Replacements.
It's an unremarkable and uncriticized attitude when practiced by other races, tribes, and nations, but is supposedly somehow more evil when advocated by white peoples.
Frankly, I have no problem with nations trying to keep their cultures intact by resisting mass illegal migrations of foreign people with foreign (and often incompatible) cultures. People should be free to travel, but generally reside in their home countries. How else are indigenous cultures and peoples going to survive? There is no compelling argument for blending all the races so that eventually everyone is mostly Indian and Chinese with trace amounts of African and European.
There are ethno-nationalists in the US who want to divide the country into different smaller countries that are ethnically homogeneous. For example, Black Nationalists often talk about separating a number of southern states into a separate “Black America.” There are others but they are obscure. All of these movements are considered extreme and fringe.
White Nationalists, if you can find one advocate for two options that I’m aware of: 1) all US white only and 2) “cascadia” which is Oregon, Washington, maybe some Northern California, Montana, etc.
In the US, white nationalism has a fairly specific meaning and, in my experience, has almost nothing to say about Europe beyond supporting their local, white nationalist movements.
White Nationalism of the American South with Jim Crow laws was bad. White Nationalism of the American North with social & financial segregation was bad.
What is not bad is cultural values that encourage good behavior. The expectation that people not be violent or socially disruptive, that they respect authority, that they be "good boy scouts" and leave a place better than they found it, these are good things.
Unfortunately, the focus on the harms and aggressions of "white culture" has resulted in too many institutions and governments throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And the result is a lower quality of life for those governed by anti-white ideology.
"If you’ve got a solid counter-example of a self-styled “nationalist” movement whose top priority is (or was) treating out-groups justly, please share in the comments."
I don't think this is fair. Are there any groups whose top priority is treating out-groups justly? Other than Christianity, which is a big ole asterisk-laden maybe.
Yes. The conversions are very harmful in cultures where the evangelicals prey on the poor, offer them bribes and work hard to turn them away from the indigenous faiths by creating conflict. They have resorted to violence too. It's terrible. Read about the Goan inquisition in India.
Sounds like you are cherry-picking historical examples. Certainly there were past abuses, but today? I doubt anyone is being "converted" against their will. Some indigenous faiths just can't compete in the marketplace of religions.
BTW, I suspect the converters were the outsiders, not the the converted.
Yes, some religious faiths like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism are not evangelical. They create seekers not believers. It would be anti-thetical for them to "compete".
And so, despite every attempt for hundreds of years (Christianity was hand in glove with the East India company that colonized India for the British), Christianity is, even now, only 2% of the Indian population.
If you go to a Christian church in India to observe, you'll notice that worshippers are Hindu at heart. They seem to think of this God as one in the Hindu pantheon. The look of the church is very Hindu temple. There is idol worship. They copy the ways of Hindu temples (part of the marketing strategy ofc, but it's funny to watch the idol worship that goes on in churches in India).
Hinduism seems very sticky. A combination of image worship and the profound philosophy, I think. The evangelicals could change a Maheshwari's name to Mary and offer her money and threaten her with hell, but in her heart, she prays to Muruga as she did before. So even the 2% is not truly Christian. Btw, the evangelicals try to sow fear and create conflict with the religion of her ancestors. They have, during British times, destroyed or converted many ancient temples into "churches".
Do you think Israel should embrace open borders? I think it's obvious they would suffer an enormous amount of terrorist attacks if they did so. Even if they merely opened the borders to people from the West Bank with no criminal record, I'm very confident it would jump up.
No, but mostly because of bias 2 - not being Israeli - I just have much less confidence about all my opinions on Israel's policies. Nominally, I think Israel should have continued the Kadima option; e.g. it should decide what settlements in the West Bank are absolutely crucial and unilaterally divest itself of the rest (ideally implementing this hypo in good faith and withdrawing from the overwhelming majority of the West Bank).
I think this would probably be the right policy because long term attempts to govern a large population without any offer of citizenship becomes ethically monstrous. However, I view Israeli nationalists more charitably than white nationalists because I am far less confident in their good options. (For example the October 7 attacks are certainly quite arguably a cost of my policy preference. Israel did unilaterally withdraw from Gaza - although it continued to exercise controls and blockades.)
All Israeli options regarding the occupation seem to suck. And I don't have high confidence as to what the least bad policy is. But U.S. options I both know more about and I don't think suck. I have no worries about white Americans being systematically destroyed by U.S. ethnic minorities. Hence white nationalism is something I abhor while Israeli nationalism is something I feel uncomfortable with.
Generally, you should care, because if you look at what groups like Hamas actually say, they're not exclusively focused on Israel or Jews. They're actually devoted to the extermination of everybody, world wide, who isn't a member of their particular sect of Islam.
Jews living in Israel are just at the top of their to-do list. We're on that list, too. If they get Jews in Israel checked off, they'll move onto the next item.
By supporting Israel, we keep the Islamicists from moving down their to-do list. That's not an infinitely valuable good, but it IS a good.
Whether America should support or not support Israel is a seperate question, I was just inquiring about Caplan's thoughts on open borders. But personally I think the reason why America should help Israel with terrorism is that Israel helps America against Iran. And we certainly don't want Israel's closest military ally being Russia or China- if America stopped helping Israel, they *would* find someone else to help them, very likely an enemy of America.
The "problem" is that usually Communist countries such as the USSR are left out of the meaning of "white nationalism" It's a meaningless term that includes Jews as if all Jews are white.
Personally I think that what is going on is Tribalism. My tribe against your tribe. American Indians never thought of themselves as Indians they thought of themselves as members of a tribe, different tribes. and frequently went to war with one another. Within the tribe is the clan structure. The overall structure is family>kin>clan>tribe. Why do the Mafia groupings call themselves "families"? The last great Indian attempted massacre in the old west was not white man trying to kill Indians. It was group of Indians (Sioux) trying to kill another group of Indians (Pawnee) and being stopped by White Men, US Army. Look at the history of Africa. It's all basically tribal.
I think the real problem here, is the tendency to treat anything short of full blown internationalism as "nationalism", and any nationalism that isn't outright hostile to whites as "white nationalism".
As you say, "The doctrine currently does little harm because it’s so rare.", but like racial hate crimes, the demand for "white nationalism" vastly outstrips the supply.
So, anybody who thinks our government's primary responsibility is the welfare of American citizens, and doesn't favor some variety or other of racial preferences, gets called a "white nationalist".
And, perversely, this actually gives real white nationalists quite a bit of cover, because people tend in response to not take the accusation seriously.
"Even if you only count Nazism and European colonialism, white nationalism has a massive body count. "
But you can't count either Nazism is not White Nationalism and is not even compatible with it. WN privileges all white people Nazism certainty didn't. Ask a Pole, a Czech or Russian.
European colonialism also isn't WNist. There was no effort to privilege the white race. There was an effort to privilege the particular national population that conquered the territory. Bit on no way was the victory of the conquistadores seen as a victory for white Englishmen. English victories were seem in Spain as advancing the interests of heretics wise theology was just an excuse to divorce and loot monasteries. Russian conquests were probably seen as another tradgic case if barbarian on barbarian violence. This is not White Nationalism this is nationalism by white people.
The problem with white nationalism is that the staff it seems to dominate contain large numbers of settled people that are not part of their ethic group. Those necessitates extreme measures to ensure the supremacy is enacted.
I would argue that there is an important distinction between treating outsiders justly and giving them the full (and occasionally more than full) benefits of citizenship/nationality (or family membership). I see nothing wrong with favoring your own tribe. There's a logical basis for tribes. And I don't see anything inherently immoral about that. Therefore the basis of your article seems founded on weak foundations.
Yes, and you can push this argument even further by stating that family, friends, and community assume treating the in-group better than the out-group. But it is impossible to treat all strangers as if they were family, friends or members of the community. They only way to avoid in-group preference so would be to treat family, friends and community like strangers, which is actually very selfish.
There is a huge difference between in-group preference and actively hurting outsiders. I think in-group preference is fundamental to humanity, but actively hurting outsiders should be actively discouraged.
It seems like the most likely reason is that you are are mostly interacting with Americans (and also potentially Australians, Canadians, and Europeans). Their countries are all still majority white and in the recent past were even more so such that positions of power in those societies would still be mostly in white hands. Thus they have two biases in favor of being more concerned with white nationalism. 1) its expected track record in their society (both conditional on popularity and even not) is a far more serious concern than other nationalisms because other nationalisms cannot plausibly hold much power in their countries given population numbers. 2) information bias - they simply know much more about white nationalism than other kinds - they are much more familiar with the KKK than Chinese treatment of the Uighur minority.
I wouldn't even think these biases are irrational. It seems perfectly reasonable to be more concerned with matters near to you than far away. And to also be more confident in rejecting a nationalism you know more about - even if you are at some level aware you just know less about other nationalisms.
"If however white nationalism regained popularity, it would be a cataclysmic disaster because white-majority countries have the firepower to wreck the havoc other nationalist movements can only fantasize about."
Well, white nationalists may be neutered, but there certainly now exist groups who *currently* have "the firepower to wreck havoc" on the world, and are doing so. Upon scratching the surface, one recognizes the patterns of controlled demolitions, not the Big Brother-reported "Who'd've thunk it?!" chaos/entropy. Curiously, many of them, too, denounce nationalism. What do you believe are their "in-group biases"? What kind of organization(s) do they want do they want to substitute for nation(s)?
I like your four metrics, but should they be equally weighted? Number 2 implies that "white nationalism" is so rare it should be considered a trivial abnormality. That's my observation, by the way. I travel a lot. I have employed lots of white cowboys. I have never met or even heard of someone who met a "white nationalist." That doesn't mean they don't exist, but I believe people who really want to make America "all white" are uncommonly rare.
I am not trying to be a troll, but I actually have no idea of what the term “White Nationalism” even means.
Based on a literal translation, it should mean the unification of all genetic Europeans into one big nation. This would effectively erase all separate European and Anglo nations.
As far as I know, virtually no one advocates this.
I have to admit, I no longer have any idea what people mean when they use that term, either. Whether that is because I am just not understanding some core principle of the term nationalism, or everyone uses "white nationalism" somewhat differently and in a non-specific manner, I just don't know.
I agree. I suspect what they really mean is white tribalism, where the white majority of majority white nations favor keeping their majority racial makeup, resisting attempts at The Great Replacements.
It's an unremarkable and uncriticized attitude when practiced by other races, tribes, and nations, but is supposedly somehow more evil when advocated by white peoples.
Frankly, I have no problem with nations trying to keep their cultures intact by resisting mass illegal migrations of foreign people with foreign (and often incompatible) cultures. People should be free to travel, but generally reside in their home countries. How else are indigenous cultures and peoples going to survive? There is no compelling argument for blending all the races so that eventually everyone is mostly Indian and Chinese with trace amounts of African and European.
There are ethno-nationalists in the US who want to divide the country into different smaller countries that are ethnically homogeneous. For example, Black Nationalists often talk about separating a number of southern states into a separate “Black America.” There are others but they are obscure. All of these movements are considered extreme and fringe.
White Nationalists, if you can find one advocate for two options that I’m aware of: 1) all US white only and 2) “cascadia” which is Oregon, Washington, maybe some Northern California, Montana, etc.
In the US, white nationalism has a fairly specific meaning and, in my experience, has almost nothing to say about Europe beyond supporting their local, white nationalist movements.
That’s my recollection of it all.
White Nationalism of the American South with Jim Crow laws was bad. White Nationalism of the American North with social & financial segregation was bad.
What is not bad is cultural values that encourage good behavior. The expectation that people not be violent or socially disruptive, that they respect authority, that they be "good boy scouts" and leave a place better than they found it, these are good things.
Unfortunately, the focus on the harms and aggressions of "white culture" has resulted in too many institutions and governments throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And the result is a lower quality of life for those governed by anti-white ideology.
"Once you recognize this human failing, your moral priority should be bending over backwards to treat out-groups justly."
What is the basis for this statement?
Jared Taylor: Respectfully treats others.
Importing aliens with different and hostile ideologies hardly seems a recipe for domestic peace.
"If you’ve got a solid counter-example of a self-styled “nationalist” movement whose top priority is (or was) treating out-groups justly, please share in the comments."
I don't think this is fair. Are there any groups whose top priority is treating out-groups justly? Other than Christianity, which is a big ole asterisk-laden maybe.
Don't Christians want to convert outsiders into Christians though?
Not as much as Islam, who will convert you or kill you.
The Portuguese evangelical Christians were particularly violent in India. Read about the Goan inquisitions. They also destroyed Hindu temples.
To quote Appiah, “Be my brother …. Or I’ll bash your head in.” An interesting interpretation of love thy neighbor as thyself.
And you think that is treating outsiders unjustly?
Yes. The conversions are very harmful in cultures where the evangelicals prey on the poor, offer them bribes and work hard to turn them away from the indigenous faiths by creating conflict. They have resorted to violence too. It's terrible. Read about the Goan inquisition in India.
In addition, the outsider converters were often attacked and murdered for upsetting the indigenous power structures.
Sounds like you are cherry-picking historical examples. Certainly there were past abuses, but today? I doubt anyone is being "converted" against their will. Some indigenous faiths just can't compete in the marketplace of religions.
BTW, I suspect the converters were the outsiders, not the the converted.
Yes, some religious faiths like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism are not evangelical. They create seekers not believers. It would be anti-thetical for them to "compete".
And so, despite every attempt for hundreds of years (Christianity was hand in glove with the East India company that colonized India for the British), Christianity is, even now, only 2% of the Indian population.
If you go to a Christian church in India to observe, you'll notice that worshippers are Hindu at heart. They seem to think of this God as one in the Hindu pantheon. The look of the church is very Hindu temple. There is idol worship. They copy the ways of Hindu temples (part of the marketing strategy ofc, but it's funny to watch the idol worship that goes on in churches in India).
Hinduism seems very sticky. A combination of image worship and the profound philosophy, I think. The evangelicals could change a Maheshwari's name to Mary and offer her money and threaten her with hell, but in her heart, she prays to Muruga as she did before. So even the 2% is not truly Christian. Btw, the evangelicals try to sow fear and create conflict with the religion of her ancestors. They have, during British times, destroyed or converted many ancient temples into "churches".
This may be of interest to you, but has virtually nothing to do with the topic of the article.
Do you think Israel should embrace open borders? I think it's obvious they would suffer an enormous amount of terrorist attacks if they did so. Even if they merely opened the borders to people from the West Bank with no criminal record, I'm very confident it would jump up.
No, but mostly because of bias 2 - not being Israeli - I just have much less confidence about all my opinions on Israel's policies. Nominally, I think Israel should have continued the Kadima option; e.g. it should decide what settlements in the West Bank are absolutely crucial and unilaterally divest itself of the rest (ideally implementing this hypo in good faith and withdrawing from the overwhelming majority of the West Bank).
I think this would probably be the right policy because long term attempts to govern a large population without any offer of citizenship becomes ethically monstrous. However, I view Israeli nationalists more charitably than white nationalists because I am far less confident in their good options. (For example the October 7 attacks are certainly quite arguably a cost of my policy preference. Israel did unilaterally withdraw from Gaza - although it continued to exercise controls and blockades.)
All Israeli options regarding the occupation seem to suck. And I don't have high confidence as to what the least bad policy is. But U.S. options I both know more about and I don't think suck. I have no worries about white Americans being systematically destroyed by U.S. ethnic minorities. Hence white nationalism is something I abhor while Israeli nationalism is something I feel uncomfortable with.
Generally, you should care, because if you look at what groups like Hamas actually say, they're not exclusively focused on Israel or Jews. They're actually devoted to the extermination of everybody, world wide, who isn't a member of their particular sect of Islam.
Jews living in Israel are just at the top of their to-do list. We're on that list, too. If they get Jews in Israel checked off, they'll move onto the next item.
By supporting Israel, we keep the Islamicists from moving down their to-do list. That's not an infinitely valuable good, but it IS a good.
Whether America should support or not support Israel is a seperate question, I was just inquiring about Caplan's thoughts on open borders. But personally I think the reason why America should help Israel with terrorism is that Israel helps America against Iran. And we certainly don't want Israel's closest military ally being Russia or China- if America stopped helping Israel, they *would* find someone else to help them, very likely an enemy of America.
The "problem" is that usually Communist countries such as the USSR are left out of the meaning of "white nationalism" It's a meaningless term that includes Jews as if all Jews are white.
Personally I think that what is going on is Tribalism. My tribe against your tribe. American Indians never thought of themselves as Indians they thought of themselves as members of a tribe, different tribes. and frequently went to war with one another. Within the tribe is the clan structure. The overall structure is family>kin>clan>tribe. Why do the Mafia groupings call themselves "families"? The last great Indian attempted massacre in the old west was not white man trying to kill Indians. It was group of Indians (Sioux) trying to kill another group of Indians (Pawnee) and being stopped by White Men, US Army. Look at the history of Africa. It's all basically tribal.
I think the real problem here, is the tendency to treat anything short of full blown internationalism as "nationalism", and any nationalism that isn't outright hostile to whites as "white nationalism".
As you say, "The doctrine currently does little harm because it’s so rare.", but like racial hate crimes, the demand for "white nationalism" vastly outstrips the supply.
So, anybody who thinks our government's primary responsibility is the welfare of American citizens, and doesn't favor some variety or other of racial preferences, gets called a "white nationalist".
And, perversely, this actually gives real white nationalists quite a bit of cover, because people tend in response to not take the accusation seriously.
"Even if you only count Nazism and European colonialism, white nationalism has a massive body count. "
But you can't count either Nazism is not White Nationalism and is not even compatible with it. WN privileges all white people Nazism certainty didn't. Ask a Pole, a Czech or Russian.
European colonialism also isn't WNist. There was no effort to privilege the white race. There was an effort to privilege the particular national population that conquered the territory. Bit on no way was the victory of the conquistadores seen as a victory for white Englishmen. English victories were seem in Spain as advancing the interests of heretics wise theology was just an excuse to divorce and loot monasteries. Russian conquests were probably seen as another tradgic case if barbarian on barbarian violence. This is not White Nationalism this is nationalism by white people.
The problem with white nationalism is that the staff it seems to dominate contain large numbers of settled people that are not part of their ethic group. Those necessitates extreme measures to ensure the supremacy is enacted.
I would argue that there is an important distinction between treating outsiders justly and giving them the full (and occasionally more than full) benefits of citizenship/nationality (or family membership). I see nothing wrong with favoring your own tribe. There's a logical basis for tribes. And I don't see anything inherently immoral about that. Therefore the basis of your article seems founded on weak foundations.
Yes, and you can push this argument even further by stating that family, friends, and community assume treating the in-group better than the out-group. But it is impossible to treat all strangers as if they were family, friends or members of the community. They only way to avoid in-group preference so would be to treat family, friends and community like strangers, which is actually very selfish.
There is a huge difference between in-group preference and actively hurting outsiders. I think in-group preference is fundamental to humanity, but actively hurting outsiders should be actively discouraged.
It seems like the most likely reason is that you are are mostly interacting with Americans (and also potentially Australians, Canadians, and Europeans). Their countries are all still majority white and in the recent past were even more so such that positions of power in those societies would still be mostly in white hands. Thus they have two biases in favor of being more concerned with white nationalism. 1) its expected track record in their society (both conditional on popularity and even not) is a far more serious concern than other nationalisms because other nationalisms cannot plausibly hold much power in their countries given population numbers. 2) information bias - they simply know much more about white nationalism than other kinds - they are much more familiar with the KKK than Chinese treatment of the Uighur minority.
I wouldn't even think these biases are irrational. It seems perfectly reasonable to be more concerned with matters near to you than far away. And to also be more confident in rejecting a nationalism you know more about - even if you are at some level aware you just know less about other nationalisms.
Re: the last meme, I had thought that depravity was the new virtue.
"If however white nationalism regained popularity, it would be a cataclysmic disaster because white-majority countries have the firepower to wreck the havoc other nationalist movements can only fantasize about."
Well, white nationalists may be neutered, but there certainly now exist groups who *currently* have "the firepower to wreck havoc" on the world, and are doing so. Upon scratching the surface, one recognizes the patterns of controlled demolitions, not the Big Brother-reported "Who'd've thunk it?!" chaos/entropy. Curiously, many of them, too, denounce nationalism. What do you believe are their "in-group biases"? What kind of organization(s) do they want do they want to substitute for nation(s)?
Thank you for your thoughts.
To the editor:
"This prediction seem to fit the facts well." sp
seems to fit.