Do white people have ethnic interests?

The Anti-Woke Book Club - August 21, 2023 Vol 4

Photo by Matt Nelson on Unsplash

By

James Pew

“White majorities in the West are every bit as ethnic as minorities are, but, for many, their sense of ethnicity and nationhood is blurred. If you’re white, you may think, ‘I don’t identify as white, only as British.’ This arises because being white in a predominantly white society, like being heterosexual, doesn’t confer much distinctiveness. Even groups which are minorities, like WASP Americans, may have a weaker identity because their ethnicity forms the national archetype and thus is confused with it.” - Eric Kaufmann, Whiteshift

“There is a middle ground in between an ethnostate and total diversity...It's some diversity, but not enough to replace the native demographic, culture of a country. I think that's reasonable. Leftists just want white replacement. Not reasonable.” - Godlover, X user

“Nation (noun) - a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory.” - the Internet

One of the most important ideas found in Eric Kaufmann’s great book, Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the future of White Majorities, is that people, being different from one another, have a range of psychological needs when it comes to how they conceive of ancestry, homeland, and ethnic identity. Kaufmann explains that “Many people desire roots, value tradition and wish to maintain continuity with ancestors who have occupied historic territory.”

Modern psychology has determined that people generally have two distinct dispositions concerning ancestry and tradition. Cosmopolitanism is the exalting of the “other’s” culture, often accompanied by the dismissal or in some cases the denigration, of the “we” and local culture. And traditionalism is the exalting of ethno-traditions attached to one's own ancestry. There is a disconnect between both of these worldviews which is at the source of the culture war. Mutual respect, and recognition of the concerns of both sides is greatly needed to solve the crises.

“Cosmopolitanism and what I term ethno-traditional nationalism are both valid worldviews, but each suits a different psychological type. Imposing either on the entire population is a recipe for discontent because value orientations stem from heredity and early life experiences. Attempts to re-educate conservative and order seeking people into cosmopolitanism will, as the psychologist Karen Stenner notes, only generate resistance.  Differences need to be respected.” - Eric Kaufmann, Whiteshift

While it is likely that most people have aspects of both cosmopolitanism and traditionalism, it can be generally assumed that those on the political left (especially those left of liberal-left) are cosmopolitans who support diversity, and those on the political right are traditionalists, who are more sentimental and long for continuity and a modicum of permanence.

“...diversity falls flat for many because we’re not all wired the same way” - Eric Kaufmann, Whiteshift

Solving the culture war may just depend on striking the right balance and compromise between these two camps with vastly different interests. Kaufmann’s theory is that there is a common ground where an approach to lightning rod issues like immigration can be formulated in a way that addresses the concerns and desires of cosmopolitans and traditionalists alike.

For too many years, when citizens of Western democracies, specifically traditionalist members of white majorities, raised concerns over immigration policy, they have been met with accusations of xenophobia and racism. This resulted in the repression of the anxieties of traditionalists, which in turn resulted in the rise of right-wing populism.

In the 1960s, “a theory of white ethno-racial oppression” was developed. It was essentially an anti-majority sentiment which gained steam under a revitalized radical New Left - it “produced norms which prevented democratic discussion of questions of national identity and immigration.”

Readers of Woke Watch Canada will recognize this “theory of white ethno-racial oppression” in iterations like Critical Race Theory or Antiracism. But readers will also know it more generally as a part of Wokeism. Instead of wokeism, Kaufmann uses the term Left-modernism. In an essay for unherd, published in January of 2020, he offers the following:

“The habit of mind I term ‘asymmetrical multiculturalism’, which combines white intellectuals’ hostility to their own group with a romantic celebration of minorities, began not in the 2010s, but in the years following the First World War. Likewise what we call wokeness is a sensibility rooted in a set of ideas I term ‘Left-modernism’, a hybrid ideology of liberal cosmopolitanism and cultural egalitarianism. ”

And from Whiteshift, Kaufmann explains the M.O. of cosmopolitanism's “anti-majority adversary culture” :

“It’s important to have people criticizing their own group: what Daniel Bell termed the ‘adversary culture’ spurs reform and creativity when it collides with the majority tradition. But what happens when the critics become dominant? In softer form, left-modernist ideology penetrated widely within the high culture and political institutions of Western society after the 1960s. This produced norms which prevented democratic discussion of questions of national identity and immigration. The deviantization of these issues in the name of anti-racism introduced a blockage in the democratic process, preventing the normal adjustment of political supply to political demand. Instead of reasonable tradeoffs between those who, for example, wanted higher or lower levels of immigration, the subject was forced underground, building up pressure from those whose grievances were ignored by the main parties. This created a market opportunity which populist right entrepreneurs rushed in to fill.”

National attachment and ethnic archetype

Last week, American presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy posted the following on X:

“I’m an American nationalist. This country isn’t just an ‘economic zone’, but it's not defined by ethnicity either. We’re *not* bound by the blood in our veins, we’re bound by the ideals that our Founders spilled blood to preserve. They wrote them out & we fought a Revolution, a Civil War, and Two World Wars to save them. I refuse to let the woke left or their intellectual cousins on the right browbeat us into thinking otherwise. I’m rooted *deep* in this country & I’ll stand my ground to the end if I have to.”

Professor Kaufmann replied to Ramaswamy’s post with the following three part thread:

1/ Why @VivekGRamaswamy gets this wrong. National attachment in the US is based less on liberal-egalitarian ideals (common to many countries & with many interpretations) than on everyday particularities such as landscape, accent, sports & yes, ethnic composition…

2/ Ethnicity doesn’t define membership just as accent or profession doesn’t define membership. But there are prototypical accents, professions (ie cowboy) and sports (baseball). Conserving a critical mass of these traits is integral to maintaining the character of the country…

3/ Surveys show those of all backgrounds say White and Black Anglo-Protestants (and Native Americans) are more prototypically American than other groups. Like having an American accent, this is not a membership question, but is part of the national heritage worth preserving

In my view, Ramaswamy is the smartest presidential candidate of my lifetime. I like him a lot. If I were American, he’d have my vote. However, Kaufmann’s conclusions are based on survey data that cannot be interpreted honestly by misrepresenting the truth about people's priorities. While it may be a desirable and romantic notion that we are united simply on the basis of powerful founding ideals, this conclusion cannot be reconciled with reality, it is a naïve and incomplete notion. As much as citizens, especially traditionalists, may revere the ideas that make their nation unique, the ideas themselves fall short of the big picture.

Presenting an incomplete origin story, with selective fragments of founding mythology, and without recognition paid to the original Anglo-Saxon ethno-traditions, or to the various associated cultural features like accents, is the source of much anxiety for many people who feel they and their cultural heritage are being excluded and erased by Left-modernism.

The cultural history of North America involves the adapting and transplanting to the new world, thousands of years of rich traditions built on Anglo-Saxon heritage.

It’s worth underlining that the founding ideas revered by Ramaswamy (and most patriots), did not appear out of thin air. Ramaswamy’s interpretation of America’s founding excludes recognition of its sacred ancestral archetype. Whether done consciously or not by Ramaswamy, this is how the program of diversity, multiculturalism and Antiracism would have it.

But we must be historically accurate, respect the truth and honour our ancestors in order to serve the needs of all present day citizens. We must do this, as Victor Davis Hansen (author of The Dying Citizen) would warn, without descending into tribalism.

The challenge faced by white majorities

Whiteshift refers to the “process by which white majorities absorb an admixture of different peoples through intermarriage, but remain oriented around existing myths of descent, symbols and traditions.”  It also refers to the decline in population share of white majorities. 

At the same time white majorities - who are generally confused about their own ethnic validity - are experiencing a massive remake of their cultural surroundings, due to accelerated immigration and multicultural policy, the ascendent anti-majority adversary movement is doing everything in its power to interrupt the process of whiteshift, and disqualify the customary norms and traditions associated with white ethnicity by relegating its myths, features and artifacts to the status of retrograde deviance, fit only for the dustbin of historical abomination. 

The last time “whiteshift” occurred in concert with an anti-majority counter-cultural movement (albeit a small movement at first) was during the American fin de siecle period. This counter-culture manifested as an attack on the Anglo-Protestant majority, who were seen as “oppressing European immigrants and enforcing puritanical laws like the prohibition on selling alcohol.” 

Whiteshift is a natural process, even though it may not be an entirely smooth one. It involves immigrants voluntarily integrating (a concept called multivocalism) into the majority culture. WASP’s are no longer the majority white ethnicity in North America. This tells us that whiteshift has occurred in the past when Jewish and Catholic populations from Europe were eventually absorbed into the greater white population of North America. This is covered in chapter two, subtitled “From WASP to white in American history.” This immigration/assimilation pattern is not exclusive to white majorities, it is seen all over the world all throughout history. 

Only in the West is there an unnatural movement aiming to interrupt and problematize the dynamics of integrating immigrants into the dominant cultural milieu. It is not likely to succeed in the long run, but as we have already seen, it will cause a lot of pain and trouble in its efforts.

To follow Kaufmanns recommendation is to advocate for whiteshift (under voluntary, “multivocal” conditions) - “a model in which today’s white majorities evolve seamlessly and gradually into mixed-race majorities that take on white myths and symbols.” Pretty much the exact opposite of the progressive agenda of “replacing whiteness with diversity” currently unfolding in Western democracies.

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Thanks for reading. There was no essay for last weeks segment of the Anti-Woke Book Club on the Richard Syrett Show on Sauga 960 AM, but you can listen to Richard and James discuss the essay Alfred Kinsey: The Father of Modern Deviancy by Barbara Kay:

https://x.com/notwokethinker/status/1691410898596892672?s=46&t=gdLRE1SeRCEu2aB62E_ejQ

Also, here is the post that started the Anti-Woke Book Club - The Most Important Anti-Woke Books - by James Pew

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