Editor’s note: This article is part of a debate between Keith Woods and Joel Davis, and is Davis’s response to the article “Nationalism doesn’t need National Socialism” by Woods.
Keith Woods put out a Substack earlier this week criticising my embrace of National Socialist ideology. He explicitly took the view that not only is National Socialism inappropriate for contemporary political circumstances, but the even stronger view that efforts aimed at the rehabilitation of National Socialism are not only unnecessary but have actually become counter-productive to nationalist goals.
His objections can be summarised in four core arguments:
- That National Socialism was a “German chauvinist movement bound up with Nordicist racial theory” and is therefore incompatible with White racial solidarity.
- That to abstract National Socialist principles independently of these alleged “German chauvinist” qualities from strips it of anything uniquely significant which differentiates it from generic ethnonationalism.
- That a rehabilitation of National Socialism is unnecessary to defend any particular nationalism outside of its particular historical context in mid-20th Century Germany.
- That National Socialism isn’t relevant to nationalist struggles in any particular contemporary context both in principle and in popular understanding, and therefore the controversies surrounding it can and should simply be “stepped over”.
I will answer each of these arguments at the conclusion of this essay. But first I will set out my case for the core reasons why I believe in the necessity of rehabilitating the ideology of National Socialism. And why in the existential struggle to save the White race which confronts us in what remains of the 21st Century, I have come to the conclusion that only National Socialism offers a complete ideological foundation for the worldview and politics victory requires of us.
The necessity of National Socialist ideology
Nationalism is more of an idea than an ideology.
An ideology is a system of ideas, a worldview. The mere idea of nationalism can be held as one idea amongst many, and in various contexts the idea of nationalism has been defended by ideological liberals, ideological Marxists and ideological reactionary monarchists. In various other contexts it has also been opposed by ideological liberals, ideological Marxists and ideological reactionary monarchists.
It is my contention that the idea of nationalism requires its own ideology, that nationalism is best served by an ideology which places the idea of nationalism at its core. Any temporary affinity that other ideologies have or may have for the idea of nationalism is precisely that, temporary, for they ultimately serve alternative core ideas. Only a worldview that values the idea of nationalism higher than any other idea guarantees that the idea of nationalism is served. Only such a worldview can ensure our nations are existentially protected from ideological loyalties that transcend loyalty to one’s own people. And National Socialism is precisely this ideology.
The essence of National Socialism is the good of the nation being elevated above any individual interest. It is this total reevaluation of every aspect of social and political life according to the racial purity, spiritual unity, moral health and military strength of the nation that makes National Socialism the taking of the nationalist idea to its (ideo)logical conclusion.
The core principles of National Socialism were derived by distinguishing the nationalist idea from everything in European thought philosophically incompatible with it. The foundations for the nationalist idea were discovered to be biological racialism, folkishness, social organicism, anti-egalitarianism, and the existential view of life as struggle. The implications of the nationalist idea were subsequently discovered to be the necessity for proactive programs of dictatorship, militarism, antisemitism, eugenics, cultural hygiene, “the abolition of the thraldom of interest”, nationalisation of finance, full employment and autarky.
National Socialists locate the foundational source for the spirit and culture of a people in race. They therefore located in the foundation of the German spirit and culture in the racial stock, in the blood of the German people. Hence the embrace of policies of racial exclusion and eugenics, to maximise the blood purity of the German people and with it their purity of spirit and coherence of culture. This foundation makes it utterly impervious to any and all subversions of national identity from what it most fundamentally is – a community of blood.
It was also from this foundation that the various degenerate and nationally debilitating tendencies in the culture and politics of Weimar Germany were critically analysed. Everything which was non-Aryan, particularly everything which was Jewish, was seen as an existential threat to the German nation. Capitalist profiteering, usury, atheistic materialism and Marxist egalitarianism were all traced to Jewish originators. Thus these social forces and worldviews were classified as spiritually (if not actually) Jewish and would necessarily be excised with the Jews themselves from a truly self-determining German society. It was the most comprehensive antisemitism ever put into political practice.
For National Socialism the solution was not simply to be found in national solidarity, but in folkish self-consciousness. National Socialism was the political application of the German cultural awakening to what distinguishes the values derived from their Aryan blood from all that is alien, dishonourable, Jewish and universal. National Socialism didn’t just take the “common sense” of its time for granted like most populist movements today, but derived its values from philosophically excavated racialist ideals and pursued an active project of cultural hygiene.
The repudiation of anything liberal from the perspective of the nationalist idea was total and uncompromising. Parliamentarianism with all its corruptions and compromises was to be scrapped entirely in order for a dictatorship to comprehensively carry out the actualisation of the national will without impediment. Freemasonry was outlawed, organised Marxism was outlawed, no foreign or Jewish-owned press were permitted to disseminate subversion.
The private property rights of the German people were to be upheld only insofar as they were subordinated to the national interest. The full employment of German labour was to be facilitated by state fiat, to maximise the productive strength and solidarity of the German people. This productive strength was to be maximally directed to the rapid development of military strength. And where sacrifices of prosperity and profit needed to be made in order to increase the self-reliance of the German economy in order to maximally limit foreign leverage over the German nation, sacrifices were to be made. Germany was to become as strong as possible as quickly as possible.
“He who would live must fight. He who doesn’t wish to fight in this world, where permanent struggle is the law of life, has not the right to exist.” – Adolf Hitler
Where liberalism upheld the bourgeois ideal of peace through compromise and negotiation, National Socialism upheld the aristocratic ideal of honour and the existential conception of life as struggle. For National Socialists, the only guarantee of survival in a hostile world is your own strength, and thus strength through dutiful service to one’s nation and the collective mobilisation of the energies of the people to this end overruled all liberal concerns to the contrary. The self-determination of the German people was not up for negotiation or compromise, it was to be asserted on the basis of the strength of the German people, and to be won through struggle as a matter of honour according to the laws of nature.
National Socialism was the total and complete victory of the nationalist idea over its every opponent. It is the nationalist idea stripped of all contradictory and limiting associations and elevated to its maximal evaluation. It is nationalism in its purest form. Without the ideology of National Socialism, the nationalist idea remains trapped in compromise and incompleteness. With the ideology of National Socialism, the nationalist idea becomes its most revolutionary, pure, exclusionary, philosophically all-encompassing, and most importantly – triumphant.
The Dialectics of Nationalism
The philosophical concept of dialectics is notoriously ambiguous. However the sense in which I am invoking it is actually quite straightforward, and I will explain it to you. So suspend any pre-conceived misgivings you may have about the concept or Hegelian philosophy in general, and try your best to understand the specific sense in which I am invoking it first before deciding whether to accept or reject its validity.
Dialectics has many applications in philosophy, but the specific one I am invoking here is dialectics as a theory of ideological evolution. And to clarify, I am NOT invoking it in the economistic “materialist” method of Marxism, which is a perversion of Hegel’s philosophy that I wholeheartedly reject.
A properly dialectical understanding of ideological evolution exposes as inadequate and superficial the conception of ideologies as mere abstract systems of principles. Dialectics (in the Hegelian sense) demands that we grasp ideologies as socio-historical developments of ethical ideals becoming self-consciously actualised through the struggle of manifesting them in concrete political form.
In practical terms, this means to grasp what an ideology is we must understand it within historical context, and we must understand ideology as an active project of self-discovery. In other words, the process of actually trying to realise an ideal or set of ideals through political struggle mutates and develops ideologies, because ideologies are active projects of self-conscious human action not simply propositional formulas. Internal contradictions and previously overlooked implications are discovered, ideologies are constantly reinterpreting themselves within the battleground of history.
To make this more concrete, the dialectical insight is that we can’t understand what “liberalism” or “nationalism” are very well at all by reducing them to abstract formulas. It’s not that its necessarily incorrect to say liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based upon the individual rights, consent of the governed, political equality, the right to private property and equality before the law. But it is extremely superficial.
To truly understand what liberalism is, you need to know that liberalism began as a project to overthrow the monarchies of Europe, and that this context is from where its dictionary definition is largely derived. But even more importantly you need to know that it radically transformed itself after it achieved its original anti-monarchical (and anti-aristocratic) ends. It has become most essentially a project to rid the world of any so-called “authoritarian regimes” that could free themselves enough from its cosmopolitanism, universalism and globalisation to pursue independence from the liberal international order. An international order fundamentally self-defined by its defence of an egalitarian project of universal “human rights” and protection of the flow of trade and investment capital across borders it seeks to render increasingly meaningless.
Anyone who tries to understand what liberalism is as a mere abstract formula cannot account for this. Theorists who try to do this usually end up concluding that at some arbitrary point liberalism stopped being liberalism and became something else which continues to call itself liberalism, appeal to liberal ideals and present itself as inheriting the entire legacy of liberalism for some strange reason.
Instead of coming to this clearly unsatisfactory conclusion, we can instead think dialectically. The development of the liberalism of Thomas Jefferson into the liberalism of Barack Obama must be understood dialectically in order for us to coherently categorise both men as liberals, which they are. Only through understanding how and why liberalism has mutated and developed throughout history can we know what it fundamentally is.
Thomas Jefferson was both a White Nationalist and a liberal, a combination of ideological notions now seen as diametrically opposed which at that time were seen as entirely compatible. How was this possible then but not now? The answer is actually quite simple. During Jefferson’s time liberals felt it made sense to synthesise nationalist ideas with liberal ideas because liberalism was first created in opposition to hereditary monarchy, an enemy they often shared with the cause of nationalism. Whereas during our time hereditary monarchy has basically lost political relevance and liberals have come to perceive nationalism as their greatest enemy.
Why am I going on about Thomas Jefferson in an essay concerning National Socialism? Because understanding this historical process where liberalism and nationalism turned against one another dialectically is actually fundamental to understanding what National Socialism is, and why its relevance remains so persistent some 80 years after it was defeated in the Second World War.
From the first liberal revolutions in the late 18th Century up until the First World War, most liberals were nationalists and most nationalists were liberals. Whether it was the Americans asserting their national will against the designs of European colonial powers, the French mass-mobilising its lower classes to fight under the tricolour, the Germans attempting to forge a unified national government to replace the various small kingdoms which made it up, the various central and eastern European struggles for ethnic independence from monarchical empires, or Australian desires for a national government to represent our distinct interests from the broader commercial concerns of the British Empire – nationalism and liberalism frequently found common cause and therefore usually manifested together in a synthetic form.
This synthesis was never stable however, for there is a fundamental contradiction between the nationalist idea and the liberal idea. This contradiction was articulated best by Carl Schmitt (20th Century Germany’s greatest political theorist, who ended up joining the party once it seized power) in his The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (1923). In it, Schmitt explains how what he calls “democracy” (which is really the nationalist idea) is in fundamental contradiction with liberalism, a contradiction he prophesied would be necessarily fatal for their alliance.
“Democracy” for Schmitt fundamentally finds the legitimacy of the state insofar as it manifests what Rousseau called the general will. I would argue that this notion is better understood by the term national will, as both Rousseau and Schmitt stress that the general will isn’t a mere sum of individual wills but is exclusively the will of those who will the common good of their people. Schmitt explicitly identifies the White Australia Policy and the denial of citizenship to Aboriginals as an example of the nationalist connotations of democracy overpowering liberalism’s defence of individual or minority rights.
“Every actual democracy rests on the principle that not only are equals equal, but unequals will not be treated equally. Democracy requires, therefore, first homogeneity and second – if the need arises – elimination or eradication of heterogeneity.” – Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (1923)
Schmitt’s radical conclusion is that the essence of “democracy” is the identity of government with the governed, and therefore can only be realised through the principle of homogeneity – in nationalism. Therefore, those who engage with politics out of self-interest or minority interest or any interest other than the national interest are therefore against the general will and their political participation is illegitimate.
Liberalism on the other hand legitimates the state primarily through its protection of rights, not popular sovereignty. Liberalism is therefore more primarily concerned with protecting both individual self-interest and minority interests from being overpowered by the state. Liberalism therefore is in the final analysis a defence of the principle of heterogeneity – putting it in direct contradiction with the nationalist connotations of democracy.
”The crisis [of Parliamentary Democracy] springs from .. the contradiction of a liberal individualism burdened by moral pathos and a democratic sentiment governed essentially by political ideals. A century of historical alliance and common struggle against royal absolutism has obscured the awareness of this contradiction. But the crisis unfolds today ever more strikingly, and no cosmopolitan rhetoric can prevent or eliminate it. It is, in its depths, the inescapable contradiction of liberal individualism and democratic homogeneity.” – Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (1923)
This contradiction is why National Socialism came into existence, as the pure nationalist idea stripped of all liberal baggage. It is also why liberalism fundamentally mutated from an anti-monarchical project into an anti-nationalist one in response. Liberalism today very clearly has protecting minorities from assertions of the national will as its highest priority, popular sovereignty and “democracy” be damned. In Germany the constitutional court has the power to straight up ban any party they feel too closely resembles the NSDAP to ensure what happened in Weimar never happens again, how democratic!
The notion that democracy must abolish itself to save itself clearly makes no sense, neither does the notion that populism “is a threat to democracy” as we now so often hear from liberal elites. But with Schmitt’s dialectical insight we can see very clearly that liberalism must abolish democracy to save itself and that populism is a threat to liberalism by virtue of the fact it derives its legitimacy from the notion of the national will rather than the (neo-)liberal project to protect minorities. And we also see that Hitler’s Volkisch Socialism was the most pure and grandiose expression of democracy in human history, being that it was the ultimate triumph of the national will.
Every nationalist tradition prior to the “third positionist” movements of the interwar period of which National Socialism is the archetypal and leading form, remains infected with elements of liberalism, with a compromise that can no longer exist. Nationalism and liberalism have been irrevocably divorced, due to being essentially contradictory ideas, and the entire past century of Western politics can be summed up most fundamentally as the recognition of this contradiction.
This is why the delegitimisation of National Socialism, as the most pure concrete form of the nationalist idea ever to come into existence, has been the delegitimisation of nationalism in general. And why there is no way to rehabilitate the idea of nationalism, of the triumph of national will, without rehabilitating National Socialism. Every attempt by nationalists at reconciling with liberalism is a futile expression of cowardice built upon dialectical ignorance, it cannot and will not work. The only solution which can save our race from being genocided by liberalism, is the revolutionary triumph of the nationalist idea. Nationalism and liberalism are two ideas which can no longer co-exist, one must destroy the other.
The existential battle between these two worldviews should be blatantly clear to all contemporary Westerners. The presence of hundreds of millions of racial aliens in our collective lands coupled with the systematic institutional suppression of our national identities is not the behaviour of a political project that feels capable of co-existing with sovereign self-conscious White nations. This is because it isn’t.
Any White nation which awakens to its national will like the Germans did under Hitler will eradicate liberalism and those whose interests it serves from their lands. Liberalism knows from there, only a total war of annihilation against the awakened nation(s) can reverse it. This is a victory they have no certainty in repeating. Especially now they have spent the last 80 years effectively genociding their own core populations, upon whose misguided patriotism they drew the strength to pull it off the first time.
In the post-WW2 international order, the decision to submit to liberalism, is the decision to surrender the nationalist idea. Liberalism cannot be reformed away from its core commitments which were set by its total victory over National Socialism, and with it the nationalist idea. Liberalism existentially redefined itself by this victory, anything short of seeking to overturn it is accepting defeat.
The forms and ways of life which liberalism now defines itself by defending are existentially incompatible with nationalist government, which is why the demographic and cultural basis for nationalist movements as well as the idea of nationalism itself it must eradicate to ensure their survival within our countries. It is simply not possible to create a form of nationalism which liberalism can tolerate without sanitising it of all revolutionary and exclusionary tendencies to the point of rendering it impotent. There can be no nationalism without racism, and there can be no nationalism without mass expulsions, not anywhere where liberalism has already cultivated demographic heterogeneity for any extended period of time. Reversing this, liberalism cannot tolerate.
Germany’s World Historical Role
There is a deeper reality to this dialectical clash of the liberal idea with the nationalist idea as the defining dichotomy of Western politics in Modernity – the opposition of Romanticism to the Enlightenment. The critique of the Enlightenment by the Romantics closely resembles the critique of liberalism (and Marxism, which is also a product of the Enlightenment) by National Socialism. Against the Enlightenment’s assertion of the universal, the Romantics counter-asserted the particular. Against the Enlightenment’s assertion of the intellect, the Romantics counter-asserted the Will.
Both of these intellectual and artistic movements encompassed the entire West, but of all the major Western nations it was Germany who resisted the Enlightenment and embraced Romanticism the most. Just as it was Germany who resisted the liberal idea and embraced the nationalist idea the most. The development of National Socialism was not simply the outcome of Weimar conditions and a reaction to the First World War, it was the outcome of a much older and more profound cultural-historical process.
The common refrain against the embrace or even relevance of National Socialism to nationalism in non-German White countries is the basic assertion that National Socialism was a specifically German movement. This is coupled with the assertion that each nation should look to its own nationalist movement history exclusively for inspiration and ideological guidance.
We can dismiss this as ridiculous simply by pointing out that no one argues we shouldn’t embrace democracy or philosophy because it is Greek. All European peoples share the inheritance of Greco-Roman tradition, just like all European peoples (for better or worse) share the cultural and ideological paradigms of Modernity. No European country developed in a vacuum, the philosophical and cultural development of Germany in the century prior to WW1 offered some of the most profound philosophical and artistic works in European history. These works collectively inspire Western culture to this day to a profound level.
As people of European descent, we share a civilisation and its cultural inheritance. European countries have always inspired and influenced each other and always will, no modern European nation developed in isolation. And right now (with the exception of Russia) we all basically inhabit the same fundamental political reality, a reality imposed upon us by American dominance. If Germany rather than America had emerged victorious from the Second World War, European civilisation would largely inhabit an ideological paradigm set by German leadership. Our race and civilisation have a shared destiny and a shared history, within which the role of Germany is at least as pivotal as of any other nation. German culture is European culture, German politics is European politics.
This is a statement with important implications, the difference between German nationalism and Serbian nationalism, for example, is that Serbia isn’t powerful enough for its nationalism to determine the ideological direction of Europe. National Socialism was therefore not simply about Germany then, it was about whether Europe is lead by Germany, and therefore whether Europe would be lead by National Socialist principles. And considering the only other potential rulers of Europe (America and the USSR) were either liberal or Marxist, it was about whether Europe would be ruled by the nationalist idea or fall under liberal or Marxist rule – two ideologies existentially hostile to the European race itself.
National Socialism, precisely because it was German, was an ideology of European survival. Informed by the characteristically German rejection of the Enlightenment and the assertion of German particularity, it was the European overcoming of the egalitarian moral cancer of both liberal and Marxist universalisms made politically manifest.
But also, National Socialism in its pure reckoning with the nationalist idea was also a totalising embrace of the concept of race – as the concept of nation can only be grasped from the more foundational concept of race. National Socialism was therefore not simply an idea made for the German nation, but for the Aryan race. And Adolf Hitler made it very clear in his writings and speeches on myriad occasions that he was concerned not merely with the fate of Germany, but of the Aryan race and Europe at large. Which makes sense, considering that what defined the German people for National Socialists is most fundamentally its Aryan racial character.
The reason every particular nationalist movement in every Western nation is out of power or too compromised to properly exercise power in defence of the nationalist idea is precisely because National Socialism lost. The reason the non-White population of Europe now surpasses the population of any one ethnicity in Europe is because National Socialism lost, because Germany lost. Germany is the guardian of the European race, that is its historical role, Europeans who want to survive should look to the Germans to show the way – which they did, with National Socialism.
A meditation upon these facts should put Pan-Europeanist complaints about the expansionism and “national chauvinism” exhibited by National Socialist Germany in defence of a delusional equality of nations in perspective. Germany has no equal in Europe, without German leadership the entire European race has fallen under existential threat. German attempts at expansion to increase its geopolitical power were ultimately measures that if successful would have secured the future of the European race. The alternative to German imperialism was not a Europe of equal nations, but a Europe subordinated to the genocidal superpowers of the Soviet Union and the United States.
There is a hierarchy of nations, this is the law of nature. Nevertheless, during the war as Germany had to take on the responsibility for ruling and defending Europe it became increasingly pan-European in outlook and activity. Meanwhile its SS became the first large scale pan-European martial order since the Knights Templar, with German citizens only making up a minority of its members by the end of the war. Had the Germans prevailed, had National Socialism prevailed, Europe would have prevailed. If you are on the side of the White race, you are on the side of National Socialist Germany, there is simply no legitimate alternative position on history you can coherently take.
Answering Keith’s objections
Now, I will conclude by answering what I see as Keith’s four core objections to the rehabilitation of National Socialism in the Substack article I linked in the introduction.
1. That National Socialism was a “German chauvinist movement bound up with Nordicist racial theory” and is therefore incompatible with White racial solidarity.
As I just argued in the prior section, the German pursuit of “Lebensraum” was fundamentally its right according to the law of nature and justified by the necessity of expanding German national strength to compete with the superpowers that otherwise had designs upon subordinating Europe – namely, the USA and USSR. The nations which stood to lose territory because of this, particularly Poland, were in retrospect victims of an agenda that would have saved Europe had it been successful.
One must remember that Germany was in the case of Poland simply taking back territory that had been taken from it in the treaty of Versailles. And the territories that ultimately came under its power after war was declared with the Soviet Union were literally territories they liberated from Bolshevik control in an existential war with communism in defence of Europe.
Again, the alternative to German rule was either Soviet or American rule – one would have to argue that one or both of these outcomes was better for the European people in order to condemn Germany from the perspective of the ultimate interests of the White race. Keith didn’t make this argument because he knows its indefensible, so instead he abstracts the issue from its geopolitical and historical context like as if Poland exists in a vacuum.
Of course Poland in fact didn’t exist in a vacuum, it ended the war under Soviet control and then became an American protectorate at the conclusion of the Cold War. Poland has now been infected with liberalism and has had its borders opened to non-White immigrants. Poland is not powerful enough to assert its own destiny in this world, its destiny is Europe’s destiny, therefore its interests should be subordinated to Europe’s interests. I do not say this out of any animosity towards Poland, I believe this is now also true for Germany itself and every other European nation.
Having said this, National Socialism has no inherent animosity towards the Polish or the Slavic peoples in general. The Germans did, due to territorial disputes. But during the course of the war, the Germans allied with myriad “Slavic” nations, many Slavs joined the SS and Hitler’s speeches increasingly framed the war as a battle to save Europe from Bolshevism. 80 years on the geopolitical context has completely changed, and also racialist science has undergone significant developments which show “Slavic” and “Germanic” peoples are far more genetically similar than was previously thought. The principles of National Socialism which I outlined in the first section of this essay could be applied by any European nation or set of nations to their exceptional individual and collective benefit.
Also it has become increasingly clear to nationalists across the West that our destinies are shared and therefore that the fate of our race supervenes upon any parochial concern. This is particularly the case for ideological National Socialists, National Socialism is now, perhaps ironically for Keith’s view, a pan-European phenomenon with its greatest contemporary popularity in the “Slavic” nations of Ukraine, Russia itself and the Baltic states.
As an Anglo-Australian and National Socialist however I don’t find this ironic at all.
Just like racially conscious White men in former Soviet republics identify with National Socialism as the greatest and most ideologically definitive historical enemy of a despised communist empire which repressed and genocided their people, I as an Anglo-Australian identify with National Socialism as the greatest and most ideologically definitive historical enemy of a despised liberal empire which is repressing and genociding my people.
Germany may have invented National Socialism, but as I have already explained this invention was a world historical act with world historical implications. National Socialism has therefore become a possession of the entire White race, as a doctrine of salvation from what will otherwise be our existential demise.
And besides, other than in countries like Poland, is the reason given for why National Socialism is a unique historical evil ever it’s “anti-Slavic” chauvinism? Obviously not. The fundamental reasons are that it was racist, antisemitic and dictatorial. That is what stigmatises it most fundamentally. And if the White race isn’t willing to consider racist, antisemitic and dictatorial solutions, it will not survive!
2. That to abstract National Socialist principles independently of these alleged “German chauvinist” qualities from strips it of anything uniquely significant which differentiates it from generic ethnonationalism.
As I explained in the first section, what defines National Socialism is that it is a complete and pure ideological development of the nationalist idea. It is the nationalist idea reasoned to its logical conclusion without mediation by liberal notions or any other notions for that matter that don’t follow from loyalty to one’s people and securing their self-determination. Nationalism is just an idea, National Socialism is an all-encompassing worldview.
“Ethnonationalism” is a redundant term, anyone who knows what nationalism truly means knows ethnonationalism means exactly the same thing. The reason we need to even use the term “ethnonationalism” today is only because of the great violence done to the term “nationalism” by liberals who seek to disingenuously strip it off its exclusionary and racialist connotations to make it compatible with the post-WW2 paradigm of liberalism. A paradigm wherein, as I explained in the section on dialectics, it has recognised its fundamental contradiction with the nationalist idea.
One can’t help but suspect those who seek to differentiate their “ethnonationalism” from National Socialism of engaging in a similar albeit softer sleight of hand.
Keith’s claim that National Socialism’s only defining feature is “German chauvinism” is laughably ridiculous. National Socialism very clearly embraced dictatorship in repudiation of parliamentarianism, revolution against reformism, the stripping of citizenship from all non-Germans, the nationalisation of finance, autarkic militarism, the most radical eugenics program in political history, a comprehensive project of cultural renewal according to “Volkisch” principles and Aryan ideals, the criminalisation of freemasonry, the total eradication of organised Marxism, the total subordination of the individual to the nation, and the total exclusion of Jews from public life. And ultimately, it attempted to remove the Jews from Germany and Europe writ large entirely (no, I’m not saying the Holocaust happened, but mass expulsions were clearly planned after the war).
These features are absolutely not universal to generic ethnonationalism. Many other nationalist movements possess some of these elements, but the only nationalist movements that possess most of them were themselves allies of the Third Reich. These of course are also the most controversial aspects of National Socialist ideology, as well as its most fearsome aspects to the powers that be.
Insofar as you want to imitate these things without calling yourself a National Socialist, you’re just engaging in a public relations strategy (I don’t have a problem with this necessarily). Ideologically, you are a National Socialist. As you should be, and this is what matters.
Insofar as you reject these things, you are rejecting taking the nationalist idea to its logical conclusion, you are rejecting what is necessary to make our nations and race strong enough again to wrestle back control of our destiny from the grip of our enemies. You are rejecting perfected ideals for putting our race back in charge of history.
Ethnonationalism without any of these National Socialist elements leaves itself no mechanism to seize full control of the state, crush its enemies, and then assert itself over our civilization. Without rehabilitating National Socialism and bringing these elements back into its arsenal, nationalism will remain cucked by liberalism until there are no longer any White nations to save. You might not want to label yourself a National Socialist, but nationalists need to be able to do what National Socialists did if they want to win.
National Socialism is the archetypal form of the total triumph of the nationalist idea. We cannot afford to surrender it.
3. That a rehabilitation of National Socialism is unnecessary to defend any particular nationalism outside of its particular historical context in mid-20th Century Germany.
Insofar as you can’t defend National Socialism in principle, you deny your particular form of nationalism the right to imitate or share its particular qualities. For the aforementioned reasons, this totally cucks your particular form of nationalism. Insofar as you concede to the enemy that National Socialism was evil, you are now submitting your particular form of nationalism to the moral and ideological standards within which this determination is made. In practical terms, you have surrendered to liberalism.
There is a good reason why before WW2, basically every Western nation was in some respects nationalist. And now, basically none of them are. It’s because nationalists haven’t rehabilitated National Socialism in principle, and are therefore subject to the implications of its condemnation.
Being forced to differentiate yourself from National Socialism, prevents you from robustly defending ideological nationalism. And insofar as you are defending the idea that White nations should expel Jews and non-Whites, you are going to be confronting this stigma.
And also in many nations, including my own, we inherit nationalist traditions which were forged under the liberal paradigm. In order to make the necessary adjustments to our respective forms of nationalism in order to oppose them to a liberal paradigm that is no longer able to accommodate them, they’re going to have to take on many National Socialist qualities. How are they going to do so without a rehabilitative reevaluation of historical National Socialism? They aren’t – it will be brought up by our rhetorical opponents and we will have to answer for it!
4. That National Socialism isn’t relevant to nationalist struggles in any particular contemporary context both in principle and in popular understanding, and therefore the controversies surrounding it can and should simply be “stepped over”.
The notion that it isn’t relevant is fundamentally ridiculous, if it wasn’t relevant then this stigma Keith is attempting to “step over” wouldn’t exist in the first place. And as I have already said, National Socialism is the nationalist idea taken to its logical conclusion. If Keith wants us to simply be able to vote for anti-immigration parties that never actually seize state power, expel the Jews and non-Whites from our homelands, eradicate leftism from our societies and develop the military strength to ensure no other power on Earth can impose their will over us, then he isn’t serious about actually securing a future for our race where we control our own destiny.
And therein lies the problem, to be actually serious about nationalism, you need to do National Socialist stuff. And you won’t be able to do National Socialist stuff, unless you rehabilitate National Socialism.
Appendix: A couple quotes from Keith’s essay I found particularly objectionable
”In the past couple of years, we’ve seen the legitimacy of Jewish Zionist power be fiercely undermined by the left, who focused on present day injustices and stepped right over the kind of special pleading for Jews that is centered on the Second World War. The mythos of WW2 that established the post-Nuremberg world order was always going to have a lifespan, and is now dying to apathy and ignorance as Hitler becomes just another historical figure like Napoleon or Genghis Khan to a generation with little sense of connection to the period.”
I mean this is just ridiculous. Leftists have been anti-Zionist for decades, this is nothing new. Moreover, these leftists typically equate Zionism with National Socialism in their moral condemnation of the state of Israel and its policies. Leftists don’t condemn Zionism because the WW2 mythos is wearing off, they condemn Zionism precisely because it contradicts the anti-nationalist ideology of the post-WW2 liberal international order.
”As for the ‘existential conception of life as struggle’, this is a metaphysical view that is inessential to the success of a nationalist movement, and in conflict with the many Christians who may otherwise support White racial survival.”
How the hell is a nationalist movement that doesn’t embrace the reality of struggle going to succeed Keith? By not struggling? The reality is this, you can’t morally argue with people who want to destroy you. You either fight them, and win, or they destroy you. Being in metaphysical opposition to this simple and obvious truth guarantees the total defeat of our movement, and is fundamentally an expression of cowardice.
This article originally appeared on Joel Davis’s Substack and is republished by The Noticer with permission.
