‘Nationalism’ is a dirty word in most circles today. Many people still associate it with the bloodshed and hatred of the previous century. But, just as globalism is not going away, nationalism will not either. New forms of nationalism are taking shape today as new generations find themselves facing similar challenges to the nationalists of old.
Everyone is familiar with 20th Century nationalism. Every history channel goes on about it endlessly. The refrain is that globalism is peace, nationalism is war. Nationalists started World War One and World War Two and so have to be opposed.
20th Century nationalism had some drawbacks. Foremost was the extreme hostility towards other nations. Back then, human distinctions were considered greater than they really are. Charles Darwin, writing The Descent of Man in 1867, shocked many with the then-liberal position that Africans were definitively the same species as Europeans. This was less than half a century before the launch of World War One.
It seems bizarre to someone from the New World, but 20th Century European nationalists genuinely saw significant natural differences between themselves and their neighbours. Even today, visitors to Europe from the New World are struck by the lingering animosity for neighbouring groups. The combination of time and proximity seems to be enough to engender hatred in many.
The latest phenomenon is Boomer nationalism. This is primarily just pissed-off old people. This phenomenon can be seen all over the Western World, particularly through politicians such as Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Pauline Hanson and Winston Peters. These Boomers represent a generation who can see death staring them in the face, and who aren’t happy about it. They project their dissatisfaction with their own mortality onto society.
The archetypal Boomer nationalist demands are not just an end to mass immigration, but also Boomer concerns such as higher pensions and lower property taxes. Often they also promote causes that directly harm younger people, such as work-for-the-dole schemes or restrictions on disability payments, that Boomers, being on the pension, are exempt from.
Boomer nationalism will never succeed because it is selfish. Trump and Farage don’t care about young people, so all their voters are now dying off. Trump has done nothing to invest in the next generation of Americans. Winston Peters first entered government when the New Zealand population was 3.6 million: it is now 5.3 million, Peters is still in government and he has done nothing about immigration.
The advance offered by Boomer nationalism over 20th Century nationalism is that it isn’t as hateful. Boomer nationalists are just as willing as 20th Century nationalists to assert their own interests, they’re just not quite as willing to make other people suffer in the pursuit. The argument of this essay is that Boomer nationalism has the correct amount of outgroup antipathy, i.e. a moderate one – it just aims it at the wrong place.
21st Century nationalism is something else, a different philosophy to both of the above, for different realities.
21st Century nationalism, like 20th Century nationalism, is primarily for young people. Like Boomer nationalism, it is only moderately aggressive. It calls for remigration rather than death camps. Because 21st Century nationalism is for young people, it is for people who never knew the good times that the Boomers enjoyed. This will give it a cold and steely edge that Boomer nationalism does not have, but 20th Century nationalism did.
This new, third wave of nationalism will have to be more sophisticated than its predecessors if it is to succeed. 20th Century nationalism, arising in the aftermath of World War One, didn’t mind making enemies. Boomer nationalism, appealing to a credulous generation of television-watchers, is simplistic and vulgar. 21st Century nationalism will have to be more diplomatic and clever if it is to harness the support needed to win.
All three waves of nationalism have the same principal enemies, namely the globalists and their lackeys. These are primarily bankers and Bolsheviks – the globohomo of Clown World Chronicles – and those they have bribed and threatened into doing their bidding.
21st Century nationalism, like the other two forms, will be forced to struggle with Christianity. This Middle Eastern religion, with its universal morality expressed in passages such as Galatians 3:28, has crippled the previous two waves of nationalism through sabotage and passivity.
The difference is that very few young people are Christian today. 21st Century nationalism might therefore adopt many New Age elements. There was already a foreshadowing of this in the NDSAP’s adoption of a swastika as rallying symbol. We could see a form of spiritualism akin to that of Ancient Greece and Rome (see the Pythia of the Oracle of Delphi) make a return, as it did during the time of William James. We could also see the rise of Elementalism.
If these 21st Century nationalists end up going to war, it will likely take the form of a civil war rather than world war or generational war. The thought of one Western country invading another World War One-style is hard to take seriously, but professors of war and conflict such as David Betz suggest that civil war across a number of Western cities is a very real outcome given today’s demographic powder keg.
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