European leaders have come out of the politically correct closet and are stating baldly that “multi-kulti” has failed. This is an awkward time for defenders of democratic Western civilization because the truth of multi-kulti’s failure constitutes an opportunity for the cloaked nationalist statists always lurking around us, just waiting for the chance to surface with impunity. Some of this has already happened in France with the recent resurgence of its National Front party and in Austria with the recent successes of the Freedom Party and the Alliance. So, even as we celebrate the recognition that multi-kulti was a dangerous and stupid policy, we must also recognize that the alternative may not turn out to be a moderate and healthy respect for democratic European traditions, but instead a hijacking by the most vicious statist elements imaginable. This is, of course, what everyone in their right mind is fearing as an outcome among the Arab revolutionaries in North Africa and the Middle East. It could easily happen also in Eastern Europe, in Western Europe, and in North America.
The problem is that the legitimate desire to retain one’s culture in the face of aggressive Islamic cultural imperialism is extremely difficult to distinguish from statist nationalism. Consider this, for example. O’Reilly, a very successful television talking head has a segment he calls “the Culture Warriors.” Now, he is not talking necessarily about Islamic imperialism here, but he is talking about “changes” in the culture and whether they are desirable or not. Conservatives of many stripes are constantly bemoaning the erosion of the old values. What is it about this that is interesting and important? It is, I think, only this, that Hitler’s Mein Kampf (“My Battle”) was in his own words “ein Kulturkampf.” Not long ago, a writer also coined the expression “a war of civilizations.”
A “Kulturkampf” is quite literally a “Culture Battle” and that is unfortunately precisely what the “national” in “National Socialism” (Nazism) was all about. The Nazis were taught to believe that they were fighting to defend and preserve their own authentic “national character” by murdering millions of helpless civilians, a huge portion of which were their own citizens.
My point is that the failure of “multi-kulti” lays the groundwork for a new nationalism, the bête noir of the post-WW-II lefties. As I’ve argued before, the identification of Hitler’s nationalism as the source and cause of WW II was a strategic diversion from the real sources and causes of that horror, which were primarily economic and political. Once again, we must distinguish between the motives for a war at the leadership level and the rhetorical rationales that are fed to gullible populations.
The post war lefties were ideologically committed to internationalism, they had inhaled this directly from Marx and Engels and expected at any moment to see the workers of the world rise up against their masters. We know that both Lenin and Stalin fervently believed that would happen (and were shocked to the core when it did not). As part of laying the groundwork for the world-wide workers’ revolution, the useful idiots (as Lenin and his followers called the Western liberals) identified German nationalism as the culprit responsible for the war.
How many of them were aware that there could be and should be a democratic nationalism, I don’t know, but their attack on German nationalism facilely ignored any such possibility and rejected all nationalism as inherently vicious. They were able to do so because it is so difficult to distinguish clearly the democratic from the statist versions of the thing.
We need a healthy nationalism in order to hold back Islamic imperialism, but as we open the door to a healthy nationalism it will be difficult to prevent the noxious green slime of murderous statist nationalism from sliding in behind us on the floor.
We must indeed fight the good Kulturkampf, but making sure to not inadvertently strengthen the perennial forces of darkness waiting only for the historical signal to reveal themselves in the streets.
This is not one of those cases where the enemy of my enemy is friend.
Immigrant9's Blog 
Mr. Immigrant,
This post is excellent and it begins a very important discussion. I hope that maybe we can tease out some principles to distinguish National Socialism from what we may term National Capitalism or National Democracy.
The first distinguishing factor is that statists will tend to base their nationalism on race (“blood and soil”), while individualists will base their nationalism on institutions, or at most, culture, meaning shared values and sometimes language and history. The distinction between culture and race can often be muddied, especially when they meet halfway at “ethnicity”. And certainly there are many democratic and freedom loving Westerners who nevertheless believe that the “white race” is dominant. Johnson talks about this in A History of the Modern World, in his chapter “The Last Arcadia”. The issue for these nationalist Americans, he writes, was that they wanted to preserve their republican institutions, and that meant keeping out other races or cultures whose values and behaviour was antithetical (or perceived to be antithetical) to the preservation of liberty. While these Americans would have certainly distrusted Jews or Catholics for their different beliefs, they also distrusted others simply because of the colour of their skin. Thus there is no hard and fast rule separating the basis for democratic nationalism vs. statist nationalism.
The key for the survival of democratic nationalism, therefore, would seem to be for democrats to focus on behaviour and values rather than essential characteristics. For once we focus on essentials (essential “whiteness” or essential “blackness” or “arabness”), it follows that we should band together with our racial compatriots, and that we should place the good of the race ahead of the good of the individual. In practice this can be difficult for some people, because in reviling certain practices of this or that culture it can often be difficult not to revile the entire culture, inclusive of every member. While, as I said, democratic nationalists are certainly capable of adopting racial essentialist positions, I think it is safe to say that the average democratic nationalist would believe that a member of Group X who is raised in our society would more or less be “one of us”, while a racial essentialist would state that he will always be part of Group X.
A good example of this distinction in practice is the distinction between the National Front, the German NPD or the British National Party on the one hand, and Geert Wilders on the other. All are nationalists; all have taken a stand against Islam. But the former are socialists, while Wilders is an individualist who places himself squarely within the Judeo-Christian tradition. The difference in their nationalism is that the former are classic racial supremacists. Wilders, by contrast, has stated again and again that he has “nothing against people”. He is not anti-Muslim. He is anti-Islam. And insofar as he IS anti-Muslim, he dislikes them because they practice Islam.
Interestingly also, while the fascist parties are vehemently anti-Semitic, Wilders is a proud supporter of Israel and Jews. This again is telling. Because when it comes to the Jews, while there are certainly “legitimate” complaints people may have about us (and certainly nobody complains about Jews more than Jews themselves), the majority of anti-Semitism is based on empirical falsehoods. People may find Jews annoying, but no one wants to send usto the gas chambers because we are bad tippers or overly active in social causes. To hate Jews generally requires adopting some sort of conspiracy theory. On the other hand, to like us(or at least to find us beneficial to one’s self interest) requires only a quick survey of all that Jews have invented and contributed (including what Israel has invented). To truly despise Jews, to see us as the cause of the world’s evils, to view us as ESSENTIALLY immoral rats, will only occur when one NEEDS to form such a belief (and yes, it is a belief not a preference, because Jews may rub people the wrong way and certainly have, but that is different from holding empirical beliefs about the ways in which they control the world and keep others down). One needs to form such a belief when one has other beliefs resting on it. A democratic nationalist does not need to hate Jews, because the deficiencies in his society are the fault of men in the society, and can be remedied (or not) by other men. The statist nationalist on the other hand, gives the nation a life and spirit of its own. Like Plato, they see the nation as a perfect Form, and any imperfections in the real world must therefore be the result of external causes polluting that Form. The Jew is the perfect enemy because he is everywhere and nowhere, few in number but at the highest levels of society, highly intelligent and highly untrustworthy.
This is again certainly not to say that democratic nationalists will like Jews while statists will hate them. However, I think generally speaking, even paleo-conservatives in the US who may hold anti-Semitic views, generally do not adopt conspiracy theories. They complain about Israel’s influence on the US government, or the dual-loyalty of Jews or cite other cultural stereotypes. But as far as I’m concerned, these are all arguable points that relate more to preference than empirical truths or falsehoods. And more importantly, I doubt that very many of these people would dislike all Jews as a matter of policy, or give much thought on a daily basis to what they think about Jews. In other words, they dislike some things we do, not what we ARE.
A really excellent and mature posting, A.G.. I particularly like your suggestions for possible names for the new nationalism, though I do think that the best one is already in use. The new nationalists should really be called “Republicans” in the original meaning of the term. Remember, “I pledge allegiance to the flag and to the republic for it which it stands.” Americans certainly used to be nationalist republicans, though the “nationalist” in that expression seems to be redundant. Perhaps they are moving back to that position now.
I also like your use of the term “essentialist.” You may recall that I discussed the shift during the second half of the 19th century from religious to racial anti-Semitism and the true meaning of that shift. In that discussion, I called the latter position an “ontological” or “metaphysical” anti-Semitism because it embraced a special metaphysical view. This view originated, I think, in Plato (it’s history is beautifully chronicled in Arthur O. Lovejoy’s classic The Great Chain of Being) and it held that everything that exists has a position somewhere on a great scale of perfection. In this doctrine, some things are “better” than other things simply because of what they are, not because of what the do. Within Christianity, for example, angels are superior to human beings, who, in turn, are superior to animals, who, in turn, are superior to inanimate objects, and so forth. The degree of perfection was, further, a function of the “amount” of “being” the thing possessed by virtue of the kind of thing it was. God, of course, was the most perfect entity and consequently “contained” an infinite amount of being. Satan, on the other hand, was the least perfect entity and contained the least being. This led to the consequential view that evil is quite literally the absence of goodness or “being.”
Why, you may ask, did I indulge myself in this digression? It is because when the Germans moved from religious anti-Semitism to racial anti-Semitism, the actually embraced the metaphysical view that Jews were inferior by virtue of their kind, and this was an insurmountable defect. I find this a fascinating disinterment of an ancient and medieval discredited metaphysical doctrine for the sole sake of justifying what was itself nothing other than Satanic evil. But it makes a kind of nauseating strategic sense. If you’re going to commit unprecedented mass murder and want your people to collaborate in it, then you’re going to want the ultimately powerful justification. And what is such a justification? It can only be that the targets of your mass murder are in their very nature, in what they ARE, themselves the incarnation of Evil.
The reason for this is simple: if the targets of your mass murder were not evil by their nature, then it would remain possible that some of them were not evil at all or that some of them could be redeemed by their actions. The only possible justification for their extermination was that their redemption was no more possible than that a manatee should fly.
This means that a racial or ontological account of the Other is always going to be very tempting for nationalists, for it will give them the justification for keeping ALL the others out, which many of them want.
Yet, there is also an excellent argument to be made for keeping MOST of certain populations out, where the unwanted population can be identified by race. The reason is that race and culture are usually very closely correlated. Thus, one might argue that one doesn’t want Such-and-suchs coming into the country, where Such-and-such is the name of a race, but where the race is not the reason for the rejection, just the convenient way of identifying the unwanted culture.
I should add that what I said in an earlier post on the subject of liberal “naming” warfare (as exemplified in “homophobe” and “Islamophobe”) applies equally to “Xenophobe.” Turning a dislike of others into a “phobia” is a strategic move that denies the very possibility of a rational dislike of a group of others. This is classic post WW II liberal Orwellian “newspeak” and it reveals how difficult it will be to defend a resurgent democratic nationalism.
So then, understanding these distinctions, how best to go about crafting a nation of National Republicans that does not mutate into National Socialism? I think the only way to do this is to craft the nationalism based on institutions and shared values. The American method of assimilation is consistent with this nationalism. This invariably means that republicans will have to cut their losses by discarding any notions of racial distinctions as these distinctions will typically lead to statist policies.