In politics, the Left has the advantage because their philosophy is simple: deny reality, demand equality (as a group), then follow me-first individualism (as an individual, and do not tell the group).
The Right on the other hand has only a few general principles, like following time-honored methods and aiming toward a transcendental excellence, to guide it. Its policies generally ending up aiming toward life with Leftism removed, which is admirable but not complete.
For this reason, Right-wingers stumble over identity. We understand inherent identity like race, class, and ethnicity. We recognize secondary identity like religion and patriotism. And then there is elective identity, like political alignment or activities.
Identity resembles a layer cake. At the base are the genetic parts like social class, race, and ethnicity. Above that the cultural parts that emerge from those, including religion. Then the choices that follow the previous two layers, like politics.
So we have cascading tribal identities. For example one could be a middle class WASP Republican who likes Star Trek, or an upper middle class Whitish Irish-Italian Democrat who likes Star Wars, but in either case the tribal identity prevails.
This follows a simple rule of tribal identity: your tribe is whatever makes you most distinctive from the rest.
Civic nationalists try to separate tribe from inherent identity. They throw out race, ethnicity, and social class — this effectively makes them Leftists — in order to focus on a minimum of “conservative” ideals: libertarianism, Christianity, patriotism.
What if instead of trying to separate the tribe from ethnicity, we simply added a selective identity that just about anyone could partake of and enjoy? We could expand our tribe to include anyone who understands our trip:
Convincing someone to change their mind is really the process of convincing them to change their tribe. If they abandon their beliefs, they run the risk of losing social ties. You can’t expect someone to change their mind if you take away their community too. You have to give them somewhere to go. Nobody wants their worldview torn apart if loneliness is the outcome.
The way to change people’s minds is to become friends with them, to integrate them into your tribe, to bring them into your circle. Now, they can change their beliefs without the risk of being abandoned socially.
As someone who is culturally very liberal but intellectually extremist conservative, your writer finds himself at a quandary: diversity is clearly one of the most destructive human inventions, on par with Communism and iOS, but it is symbolically seen as positive.
People fear aggression. Being simple creatures, they focus their fear on aggressive methods, such as deporting anyone but the founding ethnic group, and ignore consequences, in which passivity is frequently more aggressive than surface aggression.
Diversity destroys societies. It is not nice to say that, but it is accurate. Destruction is the most aggressive thing there is, but most people are afraid of taking affirmative steps to avoid it that could be perceived as “aggressive.”
Therefore, the first quest is to expand our tribe by welcoming in anyone who loves their culture, irrespective of religion, ethnicity, race, social class, or nationality. All of us can agree that there are problems with diversity, and this makes us an elective tribe.
Ethnat — ethno-nationalism, as opposed to “racial nationalism” or “civic nationalism” including “christian nationalism” — includes everyone. Whoever you are, you have a tribe. No matter what you think about race and ethnicity, you know that you want each ethnic group to thrive on its own.
Race divides us because no one believes in race. All Caucasians have a similar origin, but they branch from there, and they feel minimal unity. Trying to make a racial nationalist movement is as silly as trying to make a civic nationalist one.
But we can all agree on ethnat. In fact, we can see how White ethnic groups persist centuries later:
According to the results of the 2020 Census, 46.6 million of us claim at least some English background while 45 million claim some German. (If you look only at people who claim a single ethnic background, the English thump the Germans, 25.5 million to 15.4 million.)
America was founded by ethnic Western Europeans. These are distinct from southern, eastern, mediterranean and Irish Europeans, who have admixture of non-European elements, with a few exceptions.
America cannot unite on being White. It can unite on being WASP. Its constituent parts — tribes — can unite on the idea of tribe itself. This gives us a basis going forward: we each want to rule ourselves, interact with our people, and autonomously guide our own futures.
With that, we get a handshake deal upon the nature of society: diversity does not work. It is not the fault of any tribe that it fails because diversity fails with any combination of tribes. Only mono-ethnic nations work, like a WASP America.
Consider that even ole Adolf confirmed the lack of enmity necessary between tribes with the principle of parallel separation:
First, the Jews are definitely a race and not a religious community. The Jew himself never classes himself a Jewish German, a Jewish Pole, a Jewish American, but only a German, a Polish, an American Jew. From the foreign nations in whose midst he lives the Jew has adopted very little more than their language. A German who is compelled to use French in France, Italian in Italy, Chinese in China, does not thereby become a Frenchman, an Italian, or a Chinese; similarly a Jew who happens to live among us and is thereby compelled to use the German language cannot be called a German. Even the Mosaic faith, however important for the maintenance of this race, cannot be considered as absolutely decisive in the question of whether or not someone is a Jew. There is hardly a single race whose members belong exclusively to one particular religion.
Through a thousand years of inbreeding, often practiced within a very narrow circle, the Jew has in general preserved his race and character much more rigorously than many of the peoples among whom he lives. And as a result, there is living amongst us a non-German, foreign race, unwilling and unable to sacrifice its racial characteristics, to deny its feeling, thinking and striving, and which none the less possesses all the political rights that we ourselves have. The feelings of the Jew are concerned with purely material things; his thoughts and desires even more so. The dance round the golden calf becomes a ruthless struggle for all those goods which, according to our innermost feelings, should not be the highest and most desirable things on this earth.
The value of the individual is no longer determined by his character, by the importance of his achievements for all, but solely by the amount of his possessions, by his money.
Without culture, money rules. Without culture, the individual has no value. This is the “equality” the Left keeps talking about, a society where no one is worth anything and therefore no one is higher than anyone else. All are simply grains of sand in a large pile.
Naturally, those grains start looking for ways above the mediocre minimum and so the “rat race” and “keeping up with the Joneses” existence occurs, creating a society united on jobs and commerce. No other values can survive, and people become islands in themselves.
We do not have to like what Hitler did to admit that, on this point, he was correct.
Our tribe does not need to gatekeep; we are united by an idea that transcends all origins. We want mono-ethnic societies, and we know that the sane people in other groups want the same for their groups.
For too long, identitarianism has been tied to one specific race. It needs to spread worldwide as something that can benefit every race and ethnicity. Everyone benefits from this, and if you understand that, you are part of my extended tribe.
Tags: christian nationalism, civic nationalism, elective identity, Ethno Nationalism, identity, inherent identity, nationalism, tribe