Culture

The Delegitimization Campaign Against Nationalism Will Fail

Special thanks to Spasoye Solnewitz for his submission and collaboration on this piece

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“A spectre is haunting Europe… All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre…” These are the famous words that in a manifesto by Karl Marx describe the advances of communism in the 19th century, and they illustrate how history repeats itself. Actually, it says something about human nature. Namely, we see how man always takes to resistance from oppression, and what the consequences of this can be.

To see this we can look at what is happening today on the world political stage. The best thing would probably be to look at the election of Trump for president and the so-called Brexit, events which often are associated with globalization and immigration. To be more precise, they are described as reactions to the negative side of globalization, in which one can detect a desire from the people for a strengthening of their national identity and their country’s sovereignty. In other words, it is burgeoning nationalism that we are witnessing.

There are also more parallels to be drawn: nationalism today just as communism was then is acknowledged to be a power and one that is growing only stronger and stronger. This, one can be sure of, is despite the setbacks with the elections in Austria, the Netherlands, and France. According to many experts, these European elections, in fact, do not do much to mask the inevitable. Nationalism is on the rise and it still has a very good chance of taking over in these as well as other countries.

As a natural consequence of precisely this – if we are to connect back to what we were talking about in the beginning – a trend has now appeared, resembling what Marx in the communists’ case described as an ‘exorcism’ by a ‘holy alliance’. It was a ‘holy alliance’ that felt threatened by communism then which led to efforts to clamp down, and it is a neoliberal establishment that is feeling threatened by nationalism now.

So they have started a targeted campaign to delegitimize nationalists and their ideas.

Nationalism and the Media

One could look at many examples to see this delegitimization become apparent, such as the negative portrayal of nationalism’s successes in recent times. The media pejoratively refers to these as “quick fixes.”

This is what the nationalists have as one of their great appeals, while the so-called normal politicians, whose followers are depicted as those who unlike nationalists “can read and write”, don’t seem to like these “quick fixes” and actively avoid them.

The thing is that according to the liberals these “quick fixes” are nothing but empty words from the nationalist fringe and are a big problem because they can seduce the simple-minded.

The truth is that there is something very dishonest about this portrayal, which is one of the proofs that there exists a delegitimization effort since the result is a portrayal of nationalists as charlatans and snake-oil salesmen. This, of course, is thanks to the obvious reluctance of the media and politicians to acknowledge the positive aspects of these proposed “quick fixes.” Nationalistic voters simply end up being portrayed as easily fooled, stupid or impulsive. They are delegitimized, pure and simple, made to look inferior to rational human beings.

Without doubt, this is the portrayal that has become the prevailing one in the public conscience. But the truth is that there is no objectivity among the liberals that is worthy of the name.

Thanks to this portrayal, the people are not allowed to learn the truth. In this case, the truth is that nationalism in politics works. To take one good example, there is how Hungary now has the lowest level of unemployment in its entire history; this after having thrown out the International Monetary Fund, one of globalism’s main enforcement mechanisms, something which can’t be called anything other than a “quick fix”.

This example would seem to prove that “quick fixes” work and that the problems that are presented by the media as complicated and nuanced really aren’t. You don’t need a political expert to chew it over for you. Simple solutions like banning migrants and banning globalist organizations achieve extraordinary results.

The False Image of Nationalists

But the delegitimization effort is primarily about making nationalists look ignorant, which the media seems to do every day in their reporting. George Orwell wrote this quip about nationalism that many today would endorse without even thinking twice: “Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also unshakably certain of being in the right… All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts.”

The truth is that we today know more about these sort of things thanks to social science experiments. We now have a term called “confirmation bias.” It has been proven by experts that people tend to focus on certain facts that confirm their view of the world. In the same experiments, it has also been shown that people think less of facts that do not fit their preconceived narrative. More importantly, there is nothing that says that this only applies to nationalists. But this is what people like Orwell and the media would like to have you believe.

In the case of Orwell, thanks to his words, the safest thing would probably be to call him arrogant. It is what most of the liberals have become these days when they pile all the world’s sins on the nationalist’s doorstep and claim that nationalists are ignorant.

Without a doubt, arrogance is something which nationalists have to put up a lot with these days. What the arrogant liberal elite claim is that nationalists are in fact the personification of ignorance, when in fact ignorant people can be found on all sides. Yet it is the image of the arrogant nationalist image that today is being promulgated by the media, even if there is really nothing that says that nationalists stand out more than other people in this regard.

The Mother-View Theory

One could also go further in proving this delegitimization campaign by borrowing a word from the Swedish literary scholar and debater Göran HäggOne’s mother-view, as he called it, is not something people so easily deviate from, after which he took the image of the Serbs as a good example. Good arguments or critiques, according to him, will not affect people because of their mother-view.

As an example, consider the authority that science now has in our society. The word of scientists is viewed as authoritative, so everything that they say about global warming is taken as gospel by many people because it subscribes to their mother-view of the world in which science is the definitive authority.

A mother-view is more or less a part of our identity. This is why many people refuse to take criticism, even if they are making mistakes or could do better. The so-called mother-view theory could explain a lot, such as why otherwise intelligent people end up making fools of themselves.

This proclivity to ignorance, by the way, is what we have seen liberal journalists and politicians fall victim to in Sweden. When attention was turned to migrant crime in their country thanks to Trump and Fox News, we saw this arrogant ignorance writ large. They simply could not admit that the nationalists that they had been depicting as brain-dead arrogant idiots were right all along. To do so would admit that they too were ideologically compromised and not objective. Furthermore, since nationalists weren’t anywhere near the levers of power, liberals would have to admit that they created the hellish conditions shown on TV that they had tried to cover up for years.

The Attack on Russia

Last but not least we have the attack on Russia. Few can claim that Russia has not, in fact, become something akin to a punching bag, with many liberal journalists relishing the opportunity to bring up the Russian bogeyman.

The biggest reason for this attack is the country’s nationalistic politics and because it is the country in Europe which has gone the furthest in the dismantling of liberal democracy, which happened because the Russians simply had to break away from Western power structures to maintain their sovereignty.

Thanks to this attack, which really is part of a demonization campaign, the Russians end up looking like they are the worthy heirs of Hitler’s nationalistic legacy.

Today it is primarily about portraying them as guilty of “crimes against international law” in connection with Ukraine. However, it is only required that one juxtaposes Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the United States’ invasion of Iraq to see the hypocrisy. How little criticism there is now of the ongoing chaos in Iraq that was done in the name of liberal principles as opposed to the annexation of Crimea that was done on the basis of nationalist principles!

The Russians are being used as a political football. This would be the only way to explain why Sweden’s relationship with Russia is being compared to that of Poland’s, that is to say, a country which the Russians have been at war with for as long as they have existed.

So the attack on Russia that we now see can be explained, in the context of the delegitimization campaign against nationalists. Russia has become an avatar of nationalism according to the liberal press, so of course, they attack Russia with all the venom and bile that they can muster. By digging up more fact on this issue, for instance from the documentary “The Mask of Revolution” by Paul Moreira, one will see only more proof of how there is a delegitimization in progress.

The Result of the Delegitimization

But it is a delegitimization campaign which has started to backfire. Constant attacks on people’s identity always leads to backlash. Nowadays, where a nationalistic ideology is portrayed as something that only the worst kinds of people partake in, we see unbridled contempt flowing from the liberal authority structures. But now the contempt is starting to flow in the opposite direction. People are starting to see the ideological trappings of the people that are claiming to be objective. Their own claims about nationalists’ arrogance and ideological blindness apply to them. They are starting to panic. And just like with Communism at the turn of the 20th century, we are starting to see the birth of a mass movement whose time has come.

Spasoye Solnewitz

Vincent Law
the authorVincent Law
I have a Hatreon now! If you like my writing and want me to write more, consider supporting me there. https://hatreon.net/vlaw/

41 Comments

  • You worry too much. Everything will be fine. Just go to work and love your family. Everything else will sort itself out. People around here get so worked up! We have a great country- lots room for hunting and fishing, Baseball and the NFL…

    There is a boatload to be grateful for. Turn that frown upside down!

  • I have a certain agreement with some of y’all’s premises. What you call globalism, for example, is in fact just the newest incarnation of the same old global imperialism, led for 500 years by Western Europeans but by no means their invention nor exclusive to them. I have a great sense of “identity”, a word y’all love, with my ancestral people of ancient Britain and other NW European areas, and feel closely linked to Britain, Ireland, France (Gaul), Spain (Iberia) and Denmark. I lament what has happened to people of these ancestries, all of which am I. But who did it? The invading Aryans with patriarchal imperialism, misogyny, slavery, and oppressive caste. The Romans. The Christianized European kingdoms. The Church. Not black people, Jews and Mexicans. Not even Persians; remember Thermopylae.

    The elite ultra-rich rulers of this world come in all ethnicities and so-called “races”. They are all to whom we should cast our vigilance. They and their bought politicians. OMG of both Parties, in the U$A.

    Conceptualizing this struggle as a racial one is error. It is a shame that those of you falling into this racist thinking can’t shift your gazes to where the problem really lies—with those in power. And those in power are not Mexican black liberals Moslem immigrants, etc. Nor Jews, except as many ethnic groups have members in the elite who is oppressing us in the U$A black white or Mexican.

    Too bad because your energy would be useful in fighting for better wages for white (and all) workers, and so on… I think you’re wasting your time. And your cause is a fringe one, and a perennial failure.

  • Also, what they will use as evidence of Trump’s “lofty rhetoric” and “failure to deliver on his promises” will stem from the obstinance and inertia of the “deep state” and other bureaucrats. The fact is, the bureacrats don’t support Trump. Trump thinks of the presidency like normal people do, like he has a bully pulpit and the ability to direct the government to do what he wants it to. Unfortunately, he has been shut down on every avenue from border enforcement to the CIA doing whatever it wants with Syria (they won’t actually be shutting down their assistance of the “rebels” as they can maneuver this through back channels) to the building of a wall to “reforming” trade deals.

    It’s not “unrealistic” because Trump wants to do it, nor will he be a failure because it doesn’t come to fruition. It was unrealistic because the rest of the government doesn’t want to do it. And before liberals come back and say, “thank God that our Founding Fathers set up the government to be this way!”, I don’t think they ever believed that a) it would balloon to this degree and b) that this level of corruption was possible throughout the entire apparatus.

  • Truth!

    Media orgs like CNN and NBC engage in this dishonesty daily. Their power comes from assumed legitimacy, and then their ability of narrative framing. They will never give you the full picture, just the one they want you to see. And if a story is too big to ignore, they will brush it off, throw in a “well [X] did it too!” side-criticism to lessen the sting, etc.

    Let’s say a right-wing politician does something they want to criticize, they will not also mention that the left-winger did the same thing. Let’s say a left-winger does something that has to be criticized in order for them to maintain a veneer of credibility, they will absolutely mention the right-winger that did the same thing. This is how their bias works in actuality.

  • People like George Orwell spoke against Nationalism when Globalism was not an issue. The closest we came to a global system would have been the Colonial Empires, with the British Empire being the largest.
    Since 1945 Globalism took off. Institutes like the United Nations to world financial institutions like the World Bank to the International Monetary Fund set the stage for a global system. I could add the following;
    The European Union consolidated Europe.
    Soviet Union led to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) of Russia and many of her satellite states.
    Shanghai Cooperation Organization of China shared most of the satellite nations of the CSTO, creating a Sino/Russian alliance ,mainly to deal with NATO
    Now in the 21st century Globalism is a toxic and meaningless concept that cannot deal with a world population of around 8 billion.

  • (((Spasoye Solnewitz)))
    What is happening to the Alt-Right.
    Who does not understand the concept of a Trojan Horse?

    • This is one of the best comments I have read. The editor of this site can not be this ignorant to let them in. (((One))) is one to many. Let (((one))) in and before you know it (((they))) run the show. So, Mr. Spancer and Mr. Law, wtf gives? Do you have same hidden agenda we should be aware of?

      • That’s funny considering you agree with the counter-signalling Jew “orbit” in your comments.

        There’s the door———–>

      • Like Aaron Rogers said before winning the last 6 games of the year, “R E L A X”.

        For real! Relax. Things will be fine. Think of what you have compared to most of the rest of the world and show a little gratitude!

        This is a great country. We have it *so* good here. Be thankful!

      • No Mr. Law, David is not insane. On the contrary, he appears to be a very astute person. His comment is short but very direct indeed. And most of all funny. Any name ending with “witz” is very likely to be jewish. Also, any sane White person would never assume a pan name ending with “witz”.

        In addition, calling him insane is not an argument. It is an indication of your week position indeed.

  • How can you clammor for nationalism and deride huge swathes of the nation?

    The only nation Trump people want to support is some race-based White Nation (including Russia).

    Certainly NOT America, whose values they despise.

    • The White people are a nation within a State. There are numerous nations within the USA. Don’t conflate the two.

        • He’s right, a nation is a people and that is not always contingent on government or territory. Also what are American values? The founding fathers of America held views that were not very far removed from richard spencer and the alt right, in fact the alt right is not far removed from American Values at any time prior to the adoption of cultural marxism, so you could say they are the last of the true Americans.

          • You must have one of those special drivers licenses to drive up and unloaded such a mountain of BS.

            Quote me ONE…ANY example of a Founding Father quote containing the word “nation” that supports your claim.

          • You are contradicting yourself. You asked for any evidence of Founding Fathers considering the idea of nation to be synonymous with people, and the fact is most of the founding fathers thought this way which is proven by the fact that Negros were only included as 3/5s of a person. They wanted to make sure their nation, the White nation, held the upper hand.

            That said, I do not endorse this view, I find it antiChristian, but if the Democrats destroy this country then the people will have no choice but to organize around race.

          • Like hell it was.

            The only thing that caused the change in recent years is readily available camera phones to catch all these abusive cops in the act.

          • The cops aren’t the ones blasting out the message of racial division to millions. A few bad cops aren’t responsible for all the hate spewed out by Dems. Also the camera phones and body cams also show lots of liars hurling false accusations at the police. Cameras are a blessing for both sides, but honestly police brutality is minor compared to the massive debt and destruction of our economy (that many Republicans are also responsible for).

          • it’s neither the republicans nor the democrats it’s the system of multiculturalism that brings out the worst in all people. I know this because America isn’t the first place this has happened, there are many examples of this kind of conflict all through history and it almost never ends well. Nothing wrong with the White race, and there is nothing wrong with the black race, it’s just human nature, we spent millions of years living in close knit tribes then those tribes confederated into nations formed around common ancestry as civilization advanced, but any time we try to move beyond that our tribal nature kicks in and starts to make itself felt – and this is a good thing. it acts as a restraint on the expansion of empires, if imperialists were able to conquer foreign nations and assimilate their manpower and resources into the empire without resistance we would all be living under a global caliphate by now with no hope of escape or advancing the cause of human freedom.

            We are living in a time when a significant number of both the black and the white population feel they are not being treated fairly. We can argue about which side is right, but I believe both sides are right, the problem isn’t with the people, the problem is the system we are forced to live under. Ethno-nationalism isn’t perfect but it’s the best option we have.

          • DICTIONARY DEFINITION OF NATION:

            “A nation (from Latin: natio, “people, tribe, kin, genus, class, flock”) is a large group or collective of people with common characteristics attributed to them — including language, traditions, mores (customs), habitus (habits), and ethnicity. By comparison, a nation is more impersonal, abstract, and overtly political than an ethnic group.[1] It is a cultural-political community that has become conscious of its autonomy, unity, and particular interests.”

            I never said anything about the founding fathers definition of the word nation, I did state that their views were not far removed from the alt right. Congress in 1790 passed the first naturalization law for the United States, the Naturalization Act of 1790. The law enabled those who had resided in the country for two years and had kept their current state of residence for a year to apply for citizenship. However it restricted naturalization to “free white persons” of “good moral character”.

            By restricting american citizenship to white people made it clear who they thought of as being potential Americans.

            AS IF THE FACT THAT SOME OF THE MEN WHO SIGNED THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE OWNED BLACK PEOPLE AS PROPERTY, AND DENIED RIGHTS TO NATIVE AMERICANS AND OTHER NON-WHITES SHOULDN’T MAKE IT ABUNDANTLY CLEAR THAT RACE AND ANCESTRY WERE SIGNIFICANT FACTORS IN DETERMINING WHO SHOULD BE AMERICAN.

            Abraham Lincoln’s thoughts on race:

            “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

            If those were the views of the great emancipator I can only imagine what the rest of America thought about the issue at that time… and we KNOW for a fact that those attitudes and laws were widespread and persisted right up to the 60’s and 70’s, so most of American history.

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