Nationalism In The 21st Century

On why modern nationalism is not rooted in the French Revolution

I’ve been watching a back-and-forth between Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad) and Kenny Smith of the Homeland Party over the nature of Nationalism. The dispute emanates from this post by Benjamin:

I bear no animosity to either man, and there’s more than a bit of bickering over definitions. Neither is the view that Nationalism is simply an outcome of the French Revolution and, therefore, unworthy, a particularly new way to approach the subject by reactionaries and Christians. However, this “discourse” raises interesting questions about the nature of politics and identity in the 21st Century.

There can be no doubt that the term “Nationalism” has extraordinarily bad connotations within the minds of the masses, placed there deliberately and as a matter of policy by the liberal ruling classes. Nationalism denotes angry mobs, despotic dictators, wars, and militarism. One need only put the term into Google’s image search and see what appears to get a sense of the situation: easily-duped rubes waving flags and expressing rage and hatred toward “the Other” are the order of the day. Indeed, the optics and name of Nationalism are so appalling that it is the very reason many people are skittish about publicly endorsing it as a worldview.

The birth of the modern nation-state in Europe is commonly held to be the Peace of Westphalia, which predates the French Revolution by 141 years. Moreover, it can also be argued that the Peace of Westphalia, which formalised boundaries, created the conditions for the Enlightenment and, therefore, the French Revolution rather than being a product of it. De Jouvenel writes that, far from diminishing the state, the French Revolution supercharged it by claiming everything within it as a resource to such an extent it would have made the kings of old blush. Thus, Napoleon was able to raise army after army and confront nigh-on all other great powers alone.

In place of the “Great Chain of Being” would be patriotism, rights, and a constitution. Identity would be inextricably intertwined with the nation rather than religion, province, or a local baron or lord. In the French National Assembly, the revolutionaries sat on the left side of the chamber and the monarchists on the right; our modern understanding of left and right originates here and forms the basis of the argument that Nationalism is left-wing.

It is worth highlighting here that establishing the modern nation-state with a bureaucracy and colossal quantities of men and equipment at its disposal incentivised neighbouring nations to form yet more formalised national states lest they be crushed. Slowly but surely, the pieces were being placed on the board for the cataclysmic wars of the 20th Century — and, therefore, the modern liberal disdain for Nationalism. Yet, it is commonly forgotten that, for much of that era, the liberal and “progressive” view was to carve out sovereign states for particular ethnic groups because such policies were the most rational and trouble-free.

There is, then, more than an element of truth to the claim that Nationalism is, historically, a left-wing ideology.

Yet it also remains the case that today, Nationalism is regarded as far-right, and framing Nationalism as left-wing does not reflect the reality of the 21st Century.

Ironically, the seeds of today’s anti-nationalist sentiment can also be found in the legalistic conceptions of post-revolutionary France. Citizenship would be granted or removed by the state; Napoleon Bonaparte was not ethnically French but Corsican/Italian. To this day and historically, it has been challenging to find data or records on France concerning ethnicity and racial characteristics precisely because of the centuries-old tradition of universalism and enlightenment values.

The primary objection of the modern Nationalist is the arbitrary manner in which the state grants citizenship to the people of the world while flatly refusing to entertain any concept of ethnic and racial distinction — that is, the universalist doctrines of the French Enlightenment and Revolution. Here, Man exists only concerning his existence as a state subject, which can be used as a fungible widget for wars, labour, and tax extraction. He is permanently replaceable and subservient to an ideal or ideology.

The question, then, is what is the nature of Nationalism as it exists now in the 21st Century?

I have long believed that what we now refer to as “nationalism” is less an abstract ideology in the traditional sense and more firmly rooted in anthropology. A swallow does not need a treatise to know that it must make a nest in the spring. Likewise, healthy people do not need to be convinced that they’re more likely to be safe and secure within a stronghold surrounded by people like themselves and not foreigners. Fundamentally, such sentiment is an expression of genetic interest, and we prefer people like ourselves because they carry our genes.

The world that Globalism and multi-racialism have offered Europeans is a world in which we’re expected to be oblivious to our own shrinking numbers and to out-groups being handed territory long regarded as ours freely and proudly by the establishment. A phenomenon such as “white flight” does not occur because a European has consumed data points on race and crime statistics but because their intuition is screaming out for them to leave. Indeed, it requires theory and intellectualism to suppress such innate feelings and work against nature’s grain by accepting the abnormal as normal.

The term “nationalism”, with its baggage and endlessly negative connotations, has a lens inadequate for describing what currently afflicts us. It implies merely another ideology from a buffet of ideologies that can be bickered about and contrasted, tested for coherency and various potential policies, etc. However, this is to misconstrue the nature and scale of the calamity that is befalling us, which is nothing short of existential.

The word “nation” etymologically derives from the Latin nasci, meaning “to be born”. Nature, natal, and nation all stem from a common root and denote life and birth in an anthropological sense. This, too, predates the French Revolution by millennia. More importantly, we see once again that even within its root terminology, group selection and distinctiveness form its core.

Look at the language surrounding Nationalism today, and it is almost always associated with death and genocide, both past and present. Again, this is not so much an ideology of old, such as Marxism or Libertarianism, but the expression of a rat in a sack thrown into a lake. A set of doomsday dates on when the demographic tipping point in births or population replacement tips over into a Game Over scenario, a ticking clock that never stops and can’t be slowed down. The news is a daily churn of outrage and horror, myopically deranged politicians and outright hatred spat in the face of the natives. Long gone now is the flowery language and philosophical ruminations of a post-monarchical order; there are no grand armies to send into battle and no romantic era paintings of heavily bosomed, sword-wielding matriarchs. In the 2020s, the movement known as Nationalism has no higher aims or goals than preventing people from fading into the historical twilight.

It is the worldview of the shipwrecked and the destitute. What is called Nationalism today is merely a tattered vessel that seems the most seaworthy. Perhaps “Nativist” would be a better word or the more euphemistic and censor-proof “Traditionalist”. However, such an optical lash of paint will not change the underlying dynamic or existential nature of the crisis.

To distinguish between the past and the present, we can say:

Classical Nationalism: A political formula imposed top-down by elites to formalise and consolidate power over the masses.

21st Century Nationalism: The emergent phenomenon of European angst and dread at unwanted demographic shifts within the Globalist Paradigm.

For this reason, modern Nationalism has a poorly fleshed-out ideological framework, with different approaches and proposals emerging from the initial premise. It is not another worldview to pick off the buffet of ideologies, but people reacting to the material conditions within which they find themselves and their families.

Despite this article’s bleak and somber tone, there is, of course, space for idealism and visions of a better tomorrow. What will be our version of the Romanticism of the past, which sought to “re-enchant” the land? I think it would be minimalistic, a clearing away of the din and screech of the Globalist age, but that is a discussion for another time…