Perspective

Why I Don’t Believe In Civic Nationalism

The Trump administration has arrived in Washington.

We’ve been told that the meaning of Make America Great Again is uniting around “civic nationalism.” As the theory goes, we’re all Americans born in the same country with the same rights and freedoms, and we should value our American citizenship and find a new solidarity in the common bond of American patriotism. President Trump said in the inaugural speech, “we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American flag. And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the wind-swept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky.”

Is that really true though? Do we all enjoy the same rights and freedoms?

“A small organization, which calls diversity “a vulnerability” and immigration — both legal and illegal — the driving force toward the country’s bankruptcy, was supposed to hold its first-ever national conference at a Northern California resort this spring.

But Tenaya Lodge, a resort on the border of Yosemite National Park, canceled the booking after receiving complaints about the organization’s views.

VDARE Foundation, a supporter of President Trump, describes itself as a nonprofit “journalistic enterprise” that publishes analysis and editorial commentary to “preserve and celebrate the distinctive culture of America.” …

But the conference, scheduled for March 31 to April 2, was abruptly canceled after two organizations, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Media Matters for America, a liberal research center, published two articles Monday criticizing the event and prompting complaint calls to Tenaya Lodge. Brimelow said the resort’s sales manager told her that Tenaya Lodge was being called a white supremacist “for doing business with us.”

I dispute the idea that we all have the same rights and freedoms. Instead, I say we have a Thought Police.

From where I am standing, it looks to me like the Alt-Right community has been denied those rights and freedoms for decades. We are subjected to harassment by our political enemies. We have to put up with employment discrimination. We are routinely denied access to public accommodations like renting hotel conference rooms for political reasons. We are denied the right to assemble. The Left has even recently taken to debating whether or not we should be subjected to vigilante violence in the streets.

Why should I believe in the concept of “civil rights”? The Civil Rights Movement was supposed to be about securing “civil rights” for the black community, which is to say, ending employment discrimination, vigilante violence like lynchings, opening up public accommodations like access to hotel rooms. Fifty years later, the same people who champion “civil rights” have changed their position, and now advocate denying our community “civil rights.” Instead of fighting against employment discrimination, they practice it. Instead of fighting to open up public accommodations, they fight to restrict access. Instead of practicing nonviolence and tolerance, they are thugs who beat up people, riot and smash windows in Starbucks. These people are plainly engaged in an open criminal conspiracy to deny their “fellow Americans” their constitutional rights.

Let me give you just one poignant example of why civic nationalism doesn’t work: last week, I traveled to Washington, DC from Alabama to attend the inauguration of the president of the United States, but the Left has become so violent and intolerant in this country that it was too dangerous to bring my son along. Those of us who attended the Trump Inauguration had to pass through several levels of TSA security. We had to be caged in like animals in order to be protected from our domestic enemies who were rioting in the streets of Washington, DC and violently assaulting random people. A mob of over 1,000 people attempted to violently shut down the Deploraball which they had planned to disrupt with butyric acid bombs.

A day later, the so-called Women’s March was held in Washington, DC, but the barriers that we had to put up with during the Trump Inauguration were torn down. Hundreds of thousands of women paraded through Washington dressed up like a set of genitals, but there were no Alt-Right or White Nationalist mobs rioting in the streets. There were no mainstream conservatives violently assaulting people or attempting to intimidate their “fellow Americans.” As far as I can tell, there was no effort on the part of the Right, whether in Washington, DC or elsewhere in the United States, to disrupt the Women’s March.

Isn’t it about time we discussed the real problem? The Left does not believe in civic nationalism. They do not believe that all Americans should enjoy equal rights to freedom. Instead, they believe that social justice requires that certain classes of citizens – this is the demonology they call the “progressive stack,” which privileges “oppressed groups” above the cishet White males who are the source of all evil in the world – should enjoy those rights and freedoms. Everyone else should be tolerated in a descending order with the Alt-Right and White Nationalists at the absolute bottom of the social justice hierarchy.

Let us dispense with the fanciful idea that there are mobs of Klansmen and Neo-Nazis hundreds, if not thousands strong, who are shutting down free speech on college campuses, blocking interstates, disrupting conferences or rioting in our major cities. This boogeyman simply does not exist. It is the Left that refuses to tolerate, say, a Ben Shapiro or a MILO speaking on a college campus. This is a problem which doesn’t simply affect the Alt-Right community. There are mainstream conservatives who are employed all over the country, particularly in academia, who are terrified of expressing their political views.

The comeback will be: the Alt-Right doesn’t believe in the liberal consensus, so what are you complaining about? Isn’t that hypocritical? Why should we believe in liberalism anymore though? The Left is no longer synonymous with liberalism. It has mutated and become something else altogether. It has been infected by nasty strains of Marxism, postmodernism, critical race theory, etc. What do you think the modern Left would have to say about Thomas Jefferson, a slaveowner, or even FDR, who never challenged Southern segregation? The modern progressive would likely find his or her liberal predecessors even more objectionable than President Donald Trump or the Alt-Right.

Let us review some of the things the modern progressive has come to reject:

  • The taboo on political violenceViolence against non-leftists in the name of social justice has now become a legitimate source of public debate
  • Free speech – In the name of ridding the world of various recently discovered human pathologies, an ever expanding laundry list of -isms and -phobias and privileges which are synonymous with sin and wickedness itself, which were unknown to God and the world’s greatest theologians and philosophers, we need politically correct speech codes
  • Free inquiry – James Watson may be the greatest living biologist in the world, but we saw what happened to him when he stepped on the race taboo. It is too dangerous to pursue the truth
  • Citizenship – It is bigoted to privilege the citizens of the United States over foreigners which means it is controversial to enforce  our immigration laws
  • Patriotism – It is even more bigoted to be proud to be an American citizen in light of our shameful past as a country, especially the cishet White males whose ancestors oppressed minorities, which we must atone for until the end of time
  • Tolerance – We’re fine with tolerating any number of bizarre sexual perversions or people who don’t look like us, but someone who disagrees with us politically and morally is another question
  • Civil Rights – The “civil rights” only belong to us, not to our political enemies. A “racist” should not have any civil rights. If a bigot is trying to speak in a hotel conference room, the “woke” thing to do is assemble a mob and threaten the venue with violence
  • Law and Order – That’s a code word for oppressing minorities who are being victimized by the systemic racism of the police
  • The Constitution – It means whatever we want it to mean and besides it is a product of Dead White Males who oppressed minorities so its legitimacy is questionable anyway
  • Freedom – The federal government ought to restrict freedom to promote social justice
  • Equality – We don’t believe in equal justice anymore. Social justice means treating groups differently according to their assigned position in our hierarchy. The cishet White males aren’t a protected class
  • Peaceful Transfer of Power – We’re “The Resistance” now because Trump won the election

As I explained yesterday, Americanism used to be an amalgam of whiteness, Christianity and liberal republicanism. By 2000, the Left had already jettisoned the first two points of national solidarity. In the name of “social justice,” it has now thrown off the shackles of “civic nationalism” or liberal republicanism and declared itself to be a new orthodoxy which everyone on the Right must conform to or else. This is no longer even liberalism in any real sense of the term.

Witness this coddled brat:

So much for “reason.”

Civic nationalism is a failure because half of the “mainstream” has already rejected it. It is ironic that we are the ones who are being condemned as being beyond the pale for illiberalism. I’ve never assaulted anyone for political reasons, rioted, spit on or thrown garbage at anyone, broken the law, cried and demanded the censorship of the media, campaigned to get someone fired from their job, harassed a hotel hosting a leftwing conference, viciously slandered a police officer doing his job, conspired to harm others or deny them their constitutional rights or disturbed the peace of my community and the world.

In spite of what some mainstream conservatives like to say, there is no equivalence between the Alt-Right and SJWs. You don’t see AltRight.com trying to shut these people down or silence these crying snowflakes. We’re more than willing to engage with them because we can beat their arguments. If “civic nationalism” is going to succeed in this country, there must be an equal playing field though. As American citizens, we must be able to enjoy all the same rights and freedoms as our political opponents.

I hope the Trump administration is listening. All we are reasonably asking for is what should already be rightfully ours. The double standard we have endured for so many years cannot be allowed to continue.

Hunter Wallace
the authorHunter Wallace
Hunter Wallace is the founder and editor of OccidentalDissent.com

50 Comments

  • It is obvious we don’t have the same rights as the left. Were I a regular poster to Salon of the sort of opinions that they promote (anti-white) I could use my real name and have no fear of getting doxed — my employer, no sort of radical, would have no objections. But I have no doubt I could get fired for posting here or at amren.com.

    When the usual mainstream conservatives whine that we whites shouldn’t descend to identity politics, they fail to explain how fragmented individualistic whites will ever win against all those other groups that do unashamedly use identity politics to get what’s good for their people.

  • Bring up Watson is a great point, Civil Nationalism is a farce because it is impossible. The races are different, and should not be forced to assimilate and integrate.

  • Civic nationalism, by definition is a kind of nationalism identified by political philosophers who believe in a non-xenophobic form of nationalism compatible with values of freedom, tolerance, equality, and individual rights. So you by being fully against it, you are against values of freedom, equality, individual rights, and tolerance and for people who are xenophobic.

  • America was founded by White Nationalists who believed in White Supremacy. All of the Founding Fathers were White Nationalists. For all of its history until a few decades ago, America was White Nationalist.

    White Nationalism is as American as apple pie and the bald eagle.

    If you aren’t a White Nationalist, you aren’t really an American.

  • Yes, the whole civic nationalism ideology (often taught as if it were as sacred as a religion) is a failure. It found Hunter’s piece on how the Left do not even really believe in it to be quite well thought out. Of course, to those who have seen me on the comment boards, you are no doubt aware of my promotion of the Amerikaner identity concept for all white Americans. My piece on it may be read here https://putnamlibertynotes.wordpress.com/2016/11/27/i-am-an-amerikaner/

  • The Civil Rights Act is obviously the big problem, not the ADL, SPLC, et cetera. We factually don’t have freedom of association and so factually we do not have the same rights and no equality under the law.

    Not to mention not even being able to self-define our own ingroup and every oriental from the near east and the brownest Indios being counted as “White”.

    • that and affirmative action. we could form very powerful all white unions. we would do the best work and wouldn’t have to worry about being starved out for our views

  • “We’re more than willing to engage with them because we can beat their arguments.” Jesus Christ. I have read this line of whining over and over again as if every human being is an A-student in logic and every situation can be turned into a debate like we are all nerds who took debate class or something. It’s on the defensive. It’s reacting to an offense. And it’s a useless complaint about a situation that’s going on, instead of dealing with it. It’s a bunch of “see, look how bad they are! Waaaah!” The prescription: stop reacting to what they’re doing with pseudo academic circle jerks. If you are writing an article about how you want to be labeled— “I am an ethno-nationalist not a civic nationalist!” — then you are as every bit as pedantic at some Tumblr fag labeling zhyrself as Two-Spirit genderqueer.

  • The Constitution was a fantastic document but it doesnt work in a freaking moral vacuum. The Constitution’s intention was to guarantee the American citizenship the rights to act as one should, the right to reach the natural end of their nature; not this bullshit ancap “non agression principle” idiocy.

    The Constitution was meant to be a governing document for moral white men who understood the difference between right and wrong, that the family was the bedrock of society, and that sodomy warranted castration (bigups Thomas Jeff). It wasnt this “Marijuana is delegated to the states” and “The fathers were pro interracial homosex incest” bullshit you see sperged around by the black and yellow bowtie crowd.

    • It was for the equality of right to EVERYONE. That includes all people of all races, genders, and orientations. It is not a discriminatory document, stop making it seem that way.

  • I’m not going to be satisfied with the Trump administration until it sics the IRS on the $PLC. The entire raison d’être of the $PLC is to silence opponents of the managerial regime. Nor do they just attack us, they also go after anyone even slightly right of center, and they having a raging hatred for the Trump administration. It’s about time they got put in their place.

  • i have a strong desire to give the pampered animal screeching in the vid above something to REALLY cry about. worse, i think, is the stupid creature who bends down to sooth and comfort the poor little ‘rape’ victim. true, the white race must start having children but there are some among us that i pray never reproduce. our gene pool already has enough freaks and sickos swimming around without adding to the mess. tie her tubes.

  • I bumped into this link via another site. It is a very long essay, written by a jew but go past that cuz it is a worthwhile read, taking one on a tour of leftist activities back several decades. During the writing there are comments on the weaknesses of the right which seem accurate and something to be considered. In the end he does a look at a probable future for civil war….we need to get organized and trained to be ready.

    https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/

  • As the theory goes, we’re all Americans born in the same country with the same rights and freedoms …

    We are denied freedom of speech through back-channel economic influence, but the government and legal system explicitly deprive whites of the right of freedom of association too (as in the freedom to create an all-white residential community, for instance). Whites don’t even have their own professional organizations, although I am not sure, frankly, whether this would technically be illegal or not.

    Also, let’s not forget about government-sponsored and government-mandated anti-white (not to mention, anti-male) discrimination, e.g., in employment, academic admissions, government contracting, and government-backed business loans.

  • The Alexander Dugin ad on this site is ironic, since he rejects white racialism…. he favors a form of civic /philosophic nationalism he terms Eurasian ism…

    • It’s also kind of weird that there’s a Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie ad on this site, since they’re getting a divorce and don’t even write here.

      • No one points to those two Hollywood clowns as examples of pro white leadership…but many pro whites like Dugin, when he is not really a booster of whites. Dugin leads astray…

    • Why can’t Alt-Righters form an alliance with Dugin?

      He seems like a right fellow to me as the Brits would put it.

  • The real problem is that the left is doing the bidding of the establishment. If you are doxxed and lose your employment as a result, who makes this happen? Not radical protestors. It is your boss who makes this happen. Why does your boss go along with the radical left? Because somewhere up the management chain, or possibly the management chain of customers, there is someone who wholeheartedly supports the radical left, and no one beneath him or her dares to oppose him/her. This person is likely to be Jewish and will play the Jewish card to get his or her way.

    In any organization, the people at the top are likely to be to the left of the people below them. If you ask me, this doesn’t make sense without some additional force that goes beyond ordinary democratic and egalitarian principles. Who benefits? The Jews, for one. Start there.

    • Why do Jews benefit from destroying white man nations, in turn creating dumb and dystopic societies (they can’t skim value from, if we like to see it this way)?

      Don’t get me wrong, I am not a Jew or a friend of Jews, I just honor their right to exist. I think the core problem of white societies isn’t anybody else than the white man itself. Along with our infertility our women face away from us as we miss to clarify the relationship between rule of man and meaning of life.

      • It’s not a conspiracy, it’s a biological imperative. Jews can’t actually run a society and what we have is what it looks like when they gain undo influence.

        This is what a Jew-ruled society looks like. They can’t forge the societies of order that existed in the era of European dominance because that is what societies created by the various strains of Aryan peoples look like. They are a product of a gene-culture and cannot be decanted into an abstraction and transplanted onto any people or implemented by any people.

        A Jewish society is a product of the Jewish gene-culture and it is ugly to behold just as is their artistic expression.

      • Heard of Jewish ethnic revenge fantasies that many Jews harbor against Germans especially, whom they’ve been milking for the holohoax?

        Heard of Barbara Lerner Spectre and Daniel Goldhagen?

        You need to urgently wake up and watch this, by Kyle Rogers, who packs a punch and lays it all out for you in no uncertain terms. (That is, if Jew-tube hasn’t blocked this where you live by those Jews you claim not to be a friend of, especially if you’re in Europe…)

        What the heck is Barbara Spectre’s motivation
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROGnoNJc6Nw&t=5s

        Yes, Jewish ethnic revenge fantasies against Germans and White Gentiles and Christians are real. Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds is another sick manifestation from (((Hollywood))).

        With all best wishes to you.

        • Goldhagen is pretty straightforward on a few things. For instance he sees the Holocaust as the logical result of the Christian Gospels.

          He’s an open book.

          • Goldhagen may be an open book and we can read him because we’re Jew-wise and Jew-critical.

            However, there are many White Gentiles and Christians who are happy to go along and worship their pet Jews, especially in the Jew-USA and ZOG-USA-occupied Europe through its institutions like NATO.

            Too many Whites/Europeans and White Gentiles and Christians are drunk on the “victim Jew” perpetuated by the holohoax.

            Our Christian forefathers warned us the day would come that the Synagogue of Satan (Rev 2:9; 3:9) would unleash this White Genocide against us. And so did Martin Luther; unfortunately many of us have not heeded their warnings.

            Too many White Gentiles and Christians literally worship the anti-Christ Jews.

            Instead of paying heed to those like Brother Nathanael who exposes the anti-Christ Jews and their sickening shenanigans and impulse to destroy everything European/White Civilization has built up as the naturally internal termites/ parasites/ leeches the Juden naturally are.

            Which is why the Christ-killing Jews have forever never settled their score with Whites/Europeans and view us all as their Christian goyim enemies.

            Whether or not we are personally affiliated with Christianity, something lost of many non-Christian Whites, including in the Alt-Right and various WN groups).

          • Well said, GermanPleb. High time we stopped worshiping those who are our worst enemy.

          • I was the other day on a Polish “hate” site, where one of those – actually rare “antisemites”- expressed his anxiety over the fact that the majority of the Polish top Catholic clergy have Jewish background. To my astonishment, those who commented found it accurate that “people of the book” were bishops and archbishops, instead of the boorish Poles who are better fit to manual work.

        • My friend, I am not abnegating that jews have a natural bias on keeping their embedding cultures de-focused enough on their own interest for the sake of keeping them willing to accept jewish virtue.

          All I am saying is that 1. jews are humans and therefore have the right to establish organizations to protect their own 2. If this causes problems to other white people it is the business of these other white people to protect their own.

          2. starts with understanding that jews are not doing an evil job but an excellent job from the perspective of evolution. In turn we should learn from them for understanding what’s missing in our own culture. As a very right wing person I am deeply convinced that it wouldn’t help our white nations to consider jews as ‘evil’, because their impact is only unfolding due to our own weakness. It is not the strength of the jews that makes me worry, it’s our weakness.

          Our weakness will not be solved by addressing jewish supremacy, it will be solved by turning our minds back into a proud, brave and family based community. This is what is missing today and it won’t help to just unmask the jewish power map.

          • Right. Sowing the seeds of your own destruction is totally evolutionary advantageous. Jews behavior patters can’t survive the internet age. That is why they are so intent on shutting it down to keep the goyim from knowing.

      • I also recommend you get a copy and read Benton L. Bradberry, The Myth of German Villainy (2012).

        There is no excuse to remain brainwashed by Jewish lies with the passage of time, especially about WW2 and the Germans.

        Blurb from Google Books:
        https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Myth_of_German_Villainy.html?id=Lz8vNz4gfPwC&redir_esc=y&hl=en

        As the title “The Myth of German Villainy” indicates, this book is about the mischaracterization of Germany as history’s ultimate “villain.” The “official” story of Western Civilization in the twentieth century casts Germany as the disturber of the peace in Europe, and the cause of both World War I and World War II, though the facts don’t bear that out. During both wars, fantastic atrocity stories were invented by Allied propaganda to create hatred of the German people for the purpose of bringing public opinion around to support the wars.

        The “Holocaust” propaganda which emerged after World War II further solidified this image of Germany as history’s ultimate villain. But how true is this “official” story? Was Germany really history’s ultimate villain? In this book, the author paints a different picture. He explains that Germany was not the perpetrator of World War I nor World War II, but instead, was the victim of Allied aggression in both wars.

        The instability wrought by World War I made the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia possible, which brought world Communism into existence. Hitler and Germany recognized world Communism, with its base in the Soviet Union, as an existential threat to Western, Christian Civilization, and he dedicated himself and Germany to a death struggle against it. Far from being the disturber of European peace, Germany served as a bulwark which prevented Communist revolution from sweeping over Europe.

        The pity was that the United States and Britain did not see Communist Russia in the same light, ultimately with disastrous consequences for Western Civilization. The author believes that Britain and the United States joined the wrong side in the war.

      • I presume that ordinary Jews are close to as brain washed as we Goyim are, “thanks” to (((our freedom loving))) mass media.

      • Do you honor their right to exist as a nation within nations? Do you think non-Jewish whites have a right to create organizations and communities that are specifically dedicated to non-Jewish whites and their interests?

        Jews and non-Jewish whites do not have the same group interests. This is because of the long-standing transnational identity of Jews and their tendency to live among other peoples while remaining biologically separate over the course of hundreds and even thousands of years.

        Look at it this way: Vines grow on trees, usually to the detriment of the health of the trees. What is really in the interest of the vine?

  • What’s needed is a better, more realistic understanding of the STATE, which academics are not being honest with us – or themselves – about, because more often than not it is their employer, whom they have a massive personal self-interesting in rationalising and defending.

    Like their medieval, priestly predecessors, they provide the state with its moral and knowledgeable authority. So long as the Democrats were in power this worked famously for most academics and for the government, but not any more. Not with Trump in charge.

    However, Trump only has 4 years – 8 at the most – and the leftwing bias of academia is not going away anytime soon. Unless, that is, we expose it for what it is. And to do that we must view ourselves, society and the state from an evolutionary, i.e. Darwinian, perspective, which I provide an introduction to in this blog: http://philosopherkin.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/political-implications-of-evolutionary.html

  • “As American citizens, we must be able to enjoy all the same rights and freedoms as our political opponents.”

    Flamed by (((propaganda))) the left has lost it and will become increasingly violent. They will not care about your rights or freedoms! If you try to retaliate then you will be labeled the same.

    Let’s just hope Trump is going to clamp down on MSM and other organised dissident groups.

      • We could use the established term, Domestic Terrorist Organizations.

        Though I prefer, Anti-White Terrorists.

        Pushing the meme that they are Terrorists is very effective.

        • If they were designated as such cops would have the right, the duty, to arrest them. If they pull anymore shit and escalate the situation, I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened.

  • >>If “civic nationalism” is going to succeed in this country, there must be an equal playing field though.<<

    Kind of a tricky point which will likely have to be established in the courts; it's a matter of equal application of the laws. If a hotel has the right to reject a VDARE conference, a different hotel should have the right to turn down a gay wedding reception. The courts will either have to confirm the right to absolute freedom of association or establish a precedent stating that nationalist organizations cannot be denied the same services as other political organizations. The issue finally needs to be challenged in court by organizations like VDARE or NPI.

    • This is an excellent point. It is time to start suing the SPLC & Media Matters for preventing peaceful assembly, & hindering freedom of speech. Wherever there are “hate crime” laws they should be turned against the SPLC, ACLU and others. They simply have an agenda of promoting hatred of whites & Europeans using their mask of cultMarx lingo vis a vis white privilege.

    • This will not happen until President Trump puts a couple of justices on the Supreme Court. Then you will see things begin to turn. +FD

      • I predict a 6 – 2 Conservative Court soon (after Ginsburg and Kennedy are replaced by Conservative Trump picks.)

        Once that happens the real fun can begin…

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