On American Ethnonationalism

When the question of ethnonationalism comes up, many are often tempted to say that the United States cannot have a “genuine” type of it because of the somewhat “artificial” nature of the USA, planted as colonies and then filled with immigrants which were (originally) from NW Europe, then the rest of Europe, prior to 1965.  The Germans could have German nationalism, the Italians could have Italian nationalism, and so forth, but Americans can’t have a genuine ethnonationalism of their own.  I believe this argument rests on the false premise that race – and only race – determines nationality, which is incorrect.  This argument misses the true meaning of what the term ethnos means.  Ethnos is a word which was found in nearly all dialects of Greek (Attic, Doric, Koine, etc.) and which originally denoted a body or company of people living together.  The term developed the connotative meaning of those who live together and share the same culture, laws, language, etc. In other words, ethnos is primarily a culture term, not a racial one – though certainly we should understand that those who share the same culture will nearly always share the same racial and genetic attributes as well – but this is not the primary meaning of the term.

Hence, genuine “ethnonationalism” isn’t built around a genetic framework, but one of shared culture, mores, religion, language, etc, and obviously involves something much deeper than the superficial “propositional nation” nonsense bandied about by civic nationalists.  Indeed, ethnonationalism is the biblical and moral form of nationalism, the one which is most in line with natural law and the long precedent of human historical practice.  Frenchmen can have French nationalism because of their shared culture and language – foreign Algerians and Tunisians with their alien mores, religion, and language will never be “Frenchmen” in the true sense of the word.  Now, as this applies to the USA – certainly, the people of the USA share culture, language, etc.  It is quite legitimate to speak of an “American” ethnic group, which is distinct from other white, European-derived groups, even from other Anglo groups like the English, Canadians, and Australians (members of our cultural and genetic clade).

I’d like to take a moment to briefly discuss the phenomenon of “ethnogenesis.” As (hopefully) we all know, the existence of nations has been constantly changing throughout history, as people-groups break off from each other, migrate and join together with others, expand and diverge or contract and die.  In a phenomenon similar to biological divergence that creates new species when two or more populations of one species are separated geographically, when people sharing a culture spread out or otherwise migrate away from each other, they will begin to exhibit increasingly distinct cultures.  Much of the present-day European ethnic tableau is the result of exactly this type of ethnogenesis.  The various separate cultures exhibited by the Germanic peoples are the result of the rapid and widespread migration of peoples originally sharing a (more or less) homogenous culture outward from their Baltic homeland and into most of western and southern Europe – Franks, Saxons, Goths, Vandals, Sueves, and so forth all interacted with the native Romano-whomever cultures they encountered and the resulting divergence+interaction created the various cultures we see in (and within, at the sub-political level) their successor states.  The same general process also occurred with the Slavic peoples, whose migrations out of their initial heartland around the Pripyat basin and interactions with the previous occupants of the regions they moved to resulted in the various Slavic nations of today.  If nothing else, look to the English – a primarily Saxon overlay onto the previous Romano-British population, with admixture from Danes and Normans which brought both their genetics and certain cultural components.  This same argument could essentially be repeated for nearly every identifiable ethnos we could choose.

As such, it is certainly legitimate to speak about a distinct American ethnos which originated as British (English, Scots, Welsh, Irish) colonists and which during its formative period (before 1965) saw the admixture of a generalised immigrant population from across Europe to form a distinctive branch of the Anglo clade which is somewhat genetically and culturally different from the rest of the Anglosphere, but not too much so.

One obvious issue relating to the USA is the fact that the American ethnos which we are speaking of is essentially WHITE America.  The culture of the founding of the nation was English, and the admixture of other European groups altered somewhat, but did not destroy, the essentially Anglo nature of US culture.  To this day, our language, religion, legal apparatus, mores, and so forth are essentially Anglo in form.  Non-whites, whether post-1965 immigrants or indigenous blacks, generally do not share this white American culture.  Hispanics and Muslims, especially, make concerted efforts to resist assimilation.  Even after centuries here, blacks still display West African-derived cultural attitudes on everything from familial structure to gender work roles to the way they deal with private property.  Blacks in America are essentially Africans transplanted here and having a veneer of Anglo culture in that they speak English (more or less), adopted some forms of Christianity, and have to deal with an Anglo-derived legal system.

Yet, speaking of “white American culture” is FURTHER complicated by the fact that we can discern two more or less distinct “white cultures” in America.  I’ve delved into this on social media previously, but to recap, the two cultures are essentially that of “middle America” (i.e. “regular American culture”) and that of the “SWPL” whites.  I also wrote about this on this site a few months ago.  Essentially, the first is what we would think of as “normal” America, and it is largely descended from the Scots-Irish/Borderers (SIBs) and southern Cavalier (to use David Hackett Fischer’s terminology) components of Amero-British culture, respects authority and hierarchy, is more religious, is more traditionalist, prefers rurality, and was based off of Baptists, Methodists, and southern Anglicans for the most part, and largely makes up the South, the lower Midwest, and much of the Mountain West.  The second (the SWPL), descended from the Yankee Puritans and Quaker-derived Pennsylvanians, is more urbanist and cosmopolitan, progressive, rejects tradition and authority, and is religiously derived from Puritanism and Quakerism, which degenerated by the early 19^th century into Unitarianism and Transcendentalism, and makes up the Northeast, the Northern Tier, and the West Coast.

These are two very different groups of white people, and the current cultural conflict – everything from abortion to transgender perversion to immigration – derives from the status conflict which erupted between these two groups beginning around the 1840s, led to the Civil War, reignited again after around 1960, and which continues to this day.  THIS is the big divide in America.  It’s not “white vs. everyone else,” it’s “normal whites vs. SWPL whites,” and everyone else is dragged along and forced to choose a side (with most non-whites choosing the SWPL side since it is both higher status and promises more free goodies).

So what does this mean for American ethnonationalism?  Essentially it means that one of these two white American cultures will have to become dominant, while the other – alien – cultures will disappear or be subordinated.  Obviously, many of the Hispanics can be compelled to leave because they’re here illegally and shouldn’t be here to begin with, and the rest can be “strongly encouraged” to assimilate.  The economic mercenaries from Asia here on H1-Bs would leave if the gravy train dried up.  The blacks probably cannot be “sent back to Africa,” but could also be strongly encouraged to assimilate or, failing that, dealt with the reimposition of segregation.

Yet, that still leaves us with two white ethnoi, both of whom have reasonable claims to supremacy.  After all, the Puritans and Quakers were involved in founding and settling the country as much as the Cavaliers and SIBs were.  Can we really say whether Jamestown or Plymouth Rock has priority?

The problem is that we’ll have to if we want to have a unified nation and present a united front to the rest of the world in the 21^st century.  I know that some predict (and even prefer) a breakup of the USA into multiple “homelands” for various groups (Hispanics, blacks, different types of whites, etc.).  I believe this may become an eventuality regardless of our preferences, but I would rather not see that happen.  I’d rather see a united USA centered about a truly shared “normal American” – let’s call it “Amerikaner” – culture, either assimilating or expelling those who can’t or won’t get with the program. I strongly oppose territorial compromise.

This is why the present conflict – having Trump vs. the Cathedral as its masthead, but going much deeper – is so important.  Either the Amerikaners win or the SWPL-types win.  It’s obvious from American history that these two cultures cannot coexist side-by-side, just as Hutus and Tutsis or Serbs and Bosniaks could not.  “Diversity + proximity = war” and all that.  The war we face in America IS a culture war – the culture war is neither ancillary nor unimportant, despite what the globalist-leaning libertarian types would have us to believe.  Trump is fighting the Cathedral and the Deep State which it controls.  This mirrors culture-level fights over political correctness in the workplace, the role of fathers in families, and a host of other issues.  Those on the broad alt-Right (nationalists, NRxers, and everyone else) had better figure out that the culture war is not the province of religiously-based social conservatives only, or even primarily.

As has been noted, culture creation is now increasingly the province of the Right.  This is important because culture creation is what enables the spread of memes vertically throughout the strata of a society.  Feeling confident in their control of status-granting institutions, the progressive SWPL culturists have ceded genuinely new culture to the Right, and are content to spread their stale, endogenous culture horizontally amongst themselves.  In line with the localist and decentralising tendencies of Amerikaner culture, this culture creation should focus on local production and regional specialisation, and should find distribution via the decentralised information outlets of the internet and social media, rather than relying upon the top-down gatekeeper-laden avenues of Hollywood and the big coastal record and publishing companies.

Trump’s attacks on the Cathedral (which is what he has been doing, though most “normie” conservatives out there don’t really realize what is going on) have helped to call the SWPL culture’s monopoly on high-status into question, mostly by opening up various organs such as the mainstream media and the progressive political establishment to ridicule and open contradiction.  The psychological impact of Trump’s opposition to these, indeed, far outweighs any real damage he has done to them at a merely organizational level.  Calling these institutions into disrepute is what will break their power, and this objective should be coupled with the creation and strengthening of alternative, parallel institutions which will be available to “fill the vacuum” with Amerikaner alternatives.

Amerikaner culture is that held by the majority of white Americans (especially those in rural areas who did not vote), even in many places in New England and in California.  To see the real divide, merely look at the county-by-county election map from last November.   In the battle between foie gras and bacon cheeseburgers, our side is finally starting to get serious about recognizing that there’s a conflict, and actively participating in it.  But what eventually must happen?  If we’re to see a genuine Amerikaner USA restored, it’ll have to be by dethroning the SWPL culture within its own power centres and converting – eventually by force if necessary – the progressive Left to Amerikaner culture, or else encouraging them to make good on their threats promises to go to Canada or elsewhere.  In the meantime, the guerilla warfare of mockery, ridicule, meme-planting, and redpilling must continue at the demotic level.  The great mass of normie conservatives out there must be motivated to go beyond merely grousing about what they don’t like to actively doing something about it.  The only way they’re really going to do this is if they inculcate a shared Amerikaner ethnoconsciousness that motivates them to believe and understand that they have a culture, a nation, worth preserving.