The following exchange from a couple of days ago, on the thread to this unrelated PA article, is part of my effort to gesture in the direction of a renewal of our movement.  That effort began in earnest with the cross-posting of my “British Nationalism” piece, though I’ve been responding to “traditional nationalist” commentaries at PA for several months.  One of those with whom contest has occurred is B Hall, who writes at PA from a distributist and trad posture.  His sarcastic comment to an earlier remark from old-hand Michael Woodbridge (who was himself referring to the OP, not to me) set the conversation in motion.

Guessed Worker
Patriot commented 2 days ago Flag

You cannot replace a liberal Establishment ensconced in a liberal polity, itself engendered from that totality which is liberal modernity … you cannot replace that with ordinary folk for the most part still dedicated to 20th century British Nationalism. You have to draw a line under all that. It answers a 19th century question. We are called upon to originate. That is our historical task. Who has the courage to come together and undertake it?

GW

B Hall
Patriot commented 2 days ago Flag

“Far Right Socialist”? Michael! Don’t use that “s” word! It upsets folk sensibilities, even if the description is factually correct and accurate. ;o)

Cheers -B Hall

Guessed Worker
Patriot commented 2 days ago

I don’t think you understand the meaning of words, BH. Perhaps you think that “social” in nationalism, or used next to the word nationalism, implies some fuzzy and warm sense of working men’s comity a la the Strassers’ stillborn politics or, earlier still, of middle-class moral obligation a la Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical of 1891. That’s not what it means at all. Words are precise relational guides.

Consider the term “ethnic” in ethnic nationalism (regrettably bowdlerised by Walker Connor as ethno-nationalism, but the reality is a nationalism of ethnicity). It should be obvious that ethnicity is not a merely social bond. It is a bond of blood, genes, being and the natural identity. It is an absolute bond which grows out of the very earth and transcends the relative bond of a confected re-socialisation. It awakens us to our primordial place in the world and that of our kin. As process , it is, indeed, an awakening to a forgotten truth of self and mind, and not just a socialisation.

In contrast, what does “social” imply in nationalism? It implies a state of unification engineered from some primordial state of disunity on some confected basis which is not, repeat not, ethnicity. The wild fiction of “the fascist hero” was such. The Catholic obligation to the poor, which underlies your 19th century distributism, was another. These confections require the construct of socialisation precisely because they do not have recourse to that forgotten truth. But it is that truth, no longer forgotten, which abides in us as nationalists, and burns in us, and dictates the will of our heart. It does not function via any social construct, which must necessarily run counter to it.

You are hawking a nationalism of the past, a nationalism which failed in its day and is not going to suddenly succeed now. We can, however, step back to our deeper truth, which is our best and last redoubt, and act from that – if the means to do so is created by people like yourself. But first you have to resile from the dead social nationalism of the past.

B Hall
Patriot commented 2 days ago

Walker Connor, if memory serves, was spot on his supposed “bowdlerisation” of ethno-nationalism. I’m glad you’re aware of this author, and this particular point of his, so I can ask you how he was wrong in stating that “ethno-nationalism” is redundant insofar as an ethnicity is a people and a people a nation. From this, it’s tautology: much the same as saying “Nationalism-Nationalism”.

A few other responses, Strasserism was stillborn? Really? From my reading it was basically a return to the original principles of the DAP out of which grew the NSDAP and the 25-points which demarcated the two -clearly the latter was not “stillborn” and did not “fail” but was defeated by international finance and its errand boys -unlike Communism which did fail on its own terms.

How were the NSDAP wrong with “socialist” in the title, theory and practice? Seems to me it was was extremely important in setting out its position and, more importantly, offsetting the onset on the Reds who were conquering Europe and who have today not gone away only shifted their positions. They have, ultimately, abandoned the workers -so this is a prime constituency for us (Galloway’s figured that one out). Shall we leave all socially-minded people to Reds instead of accommodating them? Not much of a winning strategy, especially as social issues are, especially since the Scamdemic, becoming more and more relevant.

I should note I have not yet finished your latest article, but soon will. I’m looking forward to your policies, principles, positions, because, with respect, at the moment its sounding like and Englishman’s club based on ethnicity and the fact that we are all the same so should come together and hold hands on that basis alone.

In part two are you setting our what you’re for rather than against?

Do avail me of the “precise” (meaning your definition) of “socialism”.

Guessed Worker
Patriot commented 2 days ago

Oh dear, BH! Connor neglected the fact that nationalism is a thought-world in its totality, just as liberalism is. It has its own axis defined by the dynamic of nativism ↔ imperialism, along which sit several distinct philosophical forms. Without that basic starting position everything is liable to be thrown together (which Connor, in his ignorance, did and which produced the nonsense of “ethno-nationalism”). He would never have dreamt of handling the liberal thought-world, which runs from anarcho-capitalism, say, to international Bolshevism, in the same cavalier way.

So, for the record, nationalism is not one philosophy but several, which articulate in a relational line from nativism to National Socialism. Only one of these – a hybrid, actually – is predicated on ethnicity. There is, therefore, no tautology in the term “ethnic nationalism”. Perhaps you are confused by the fact that the philosophy of it has not been formally intellectualised at all. Connor did not address – that was never his intention. None of his fellow post-war sociologists addressed it. I want us to address it, and not just to weakly accept what non-nationalists like Connor, Gellner, Anderson et al have written about it. Personally, I would contend that it is tri-partite in structure, and I wrote a piece to that effect just recently for this site. I would also contend that Heidegger’s thought is indispensable to it (I very much doubt that Connor was a student of Heidegger).

On the Strassers, one was assassinated and the other exiled. On what basis you claim that their thinking was not aborted I just don’t know. Anyway, the issue there isn’t where it came from but where it might have gone, had the movement not been led by a clique of murderous gangsters. Surely, the issue for us is that the idea of a class-based (ie, socially not ethnically predicated) politics of nationalism died with it, and has zero utility for us today (like the nationalism of the gangsters).

As an educated guess, Strasserism in our time could not relate to the polity at all. Who are “the workers”? That world has gone, and with the coming of AI, quantum computing, robotics, and the ubiquitous algorithm, will never return. So what social construct could be reified to identify them, appeal to them, and move them? You are a hundred years too late. We’ve got to get ahead of the postmodern paradigm.

You have ability. You are useful. You can create from scratch rather than repeat the tropes of yesterday’s failure. Come on! Let’s make a school of thought and push this thing forward.

B Hall
Patriot commented 2 days ago

1) Nationalism is not “thought-world” -it is the natural basis of order in accordance with Nature. It is impulse. As I said in in struggle session last year on the Third Position, was not nationalism (one tribe against another) not the basis of all which followed after we came from the caves?

2) I am no fan of Connor but I maintain that point cannot be denied.

3) “…nationalism is not one philosophy but several, which articulate in a relational line from nativism to National Socialism. Only one of these – a hybrid, actually – is predicated on ethnicity”. No, both nativist (by default of the word) and NatSoc are both predicated on ethnicity. NatSoc set out as explicitly German and had no vestige in the imperialism of fascism. Instead of “hybrid” I would offer “synthesis”: matching nationalism with socialism and rejecting the class divide is still to this day the best position: the Third Position.

4) “… the issue for us is that the idea of a class-based (ie, socially not ethnically predicated) politics of nationalism died with it, and has zero utility for us today.” -see above considerations on class division. Neither Strasser’s Black Front nor Uncle NSDAP advanced class division and so was not “class-based”. GW, this is 101 Nationalist history, Sir.

5) “Who are “the workers”? Err, the same folk, the truckers, in Canada and now worldwide who have done FAR MORE to attack the System, instil destruct in it, and form community than any bitching elitist from our side (this is NOT aimed at you). Sticking point for the Movement: Far too many elitist reactionaries; far too few populist revolutionaries.

6) “We’ve got to get ahead of the postmodern paradigm.” Yes, by raising consciousness both of their valued position as worker-provider and their position as native and the foreigner being brought in to undercut their wages and starve their families. Workers and the working man’s pride and resent does not end with AI: it creates a larger number of resentful men with time on their hands to see our message, now they can no longer afford Sky footy and have nagging kids bemoaning their luxury due to UBI.

7) With all this said, you are not seeing the big picture. You are friends with Morgoth -go listen to his latest with Endeavour on most of these subjects. He gets it. You, Sir, don’t.

Guessed Worker
Patriot commented 1 day ago

BH,

If it seems useful, I will write a piece for the site editor to expand on the five categories of development set down in my last article, and maybe try to side-light them with the stock ideational form of foundation-structure-articulation and some other relevant bases. By that means we might then structure and discipline a debate about the nature and function of this movement, so that it will have some bite and focus. As things are, it’s like herding cats, frankly.

Before even that, though, it is absolutely necessary to come to some conclusion on the first six of the seven base assumptions in that article. If we do not do that, then good minds like yours will continue flogging away at dead politics, as if we are all in some permanent state of Munich 1918, and the primary concerns are still economic, moral, and social. No, the primary issue now is existential and human. It has never presented in the past history of Europe. That is why our nationalism must be holistic and ethnic, and cannot conceptualise as a sectional, door-to-door appeal to the lower third of the population pyramid, such as in our failed past. We have to trade up intellectually and win a hearing from middle-class educated people too, because that is where the political class comes from (the Canadian truckers’ leaders are not truckers at all but middle-class activists like Marazzo and Lich, while Chris Barber is a farmer).

There will have to be an acknowledgement, especially among older and more experienced nationalists, that change is timely and unavoidable. I know people love their ideologies – nationalists, especially – and don’t ever want to give them up. But we love our people more.

Some other comments.

1. National Socialism was not predicated on ethnicity. It was predicated on national greatness (ie, fascism, so it freely mixed the state with the nation), which greatness was then expressed via conquest and empire. That is why Nietzschean morality and the figure of the reborn hero were the social desiderata – they were purposive to that end. The genetic component of National Socialism was subsidiary and unresolved. Was it, for example, a German nationalism, a Germanic (sub-racial) nationalism or an Aryan (fake-racial) nationalism?

2. Further, an authentic ethnic nationalism cannot be expansive and imperial. It must be universal to all peoples of the land (Slavic peoples, for example), for it is in one-third part a politics of the native principle. National Socialism does not somehow splurge into it merely by virtue of being a nationalism. Ethnic nationalism is a specific and naturalistic philosophy emergent from the being of Man. It is the antithesis of National Socialism, which is confected and teleological. Nationalism has its axiality, and these two are at opposing poles. Let us be clear about that.

3. You also splurge activism into base conceptualisation. This is very typical of a movement which has no intellectual leadership. Getting ahead of postmodernity is not a task of activists on the ground, who are opposed by activist banks and corporations with immense wealth, and by think-tanks and international fora filled to the brim with ideas and agency. Conventional activism will have no historical impact whatsoever. Wake up!

The challenge is an intellectual one, initially of conceptualisation and then of method; and it is urgent. We are within a decade of postmodernity’s completion. Postmodernity itself should properly be understood as an End Time of modernity. Like the Judaic End Time, postmodernity itself will be replaced by a New Age of delimited elitism. A difference between the technocratic model and the Judaic model, however, is that the denaturing and de-ethnicisation of us is not conditional to that Age but a product of it. Those of us in whom Nature and ethnicity survive shall not be slaves to the elites but parasites upon them (whose life is an optional matter for the elites, and useful for harems). This is the Re-Set for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

If you like Morgoth’s work on the subject, and you respect his efforts to awaken the Single Jewish Causers in our midst, you now know a bit more about its origination. I would be delighted if you would follow his path, because that will bring you to everything else I am saying.

I am not wrong about all this. The movement is massively complacent and dedicated to a dead ideology. Join me and give our people at least a working alternative of their own ineffable human truth.

GW

Guessed Worker
Patriot commented 1 day ago Flag

One final comment.. Of course, nationalism as a whole is a thought-world, and contains a variety of forms limited in number but great in diversity in principle and in objective; and, bar nativism, every one a product of thought. And, second, for that same reason Connor was wrong.

B Hall
Patriot commented 1 day ago Flag

GW, thanks for an enjoyable chat and for your time and effort. Allow me to finish your latest and consider these points to unpack and get to the base root of what you’re saying.

We both speak earnestly and non-combatively because we are on the same side. We all have different perspectives but this doesn’t necessitate being at loggerheads. I’m open to new ideas and suggestions, but it will be hard if not impossible to convince me that socialism (let’s call it folk-concern) and populism (mass resistance against our collective enemies lording it over us) should be taken out of Nationalism or even side-lined -especially at this time of huge societal changes. I have a piece on this very subject coming soon.

Guessed Worker
Patriot commented 20 hours ago Flag

BH, I shall look forward to reading your piece. Perhaps we should contest on the basis of the relative utility of the social and the existential in the age of human artifice which is already upon us, and which will advance with great rapidity in this country with the digitisation of the NHS in only two years.