Michael Brendan Dougherty: What Do Nationalists Want?

Michael Brendan Dougherty writes at The Week:

“The new nationalism in Europe and America is no longer rising. It has risen.

But what does this new nationalism stand for? What do the new nationalists who voted for Brexit and Donald Trump actually want? Up until now, they have been defined more by what and who they’re against than by some motivating vision of what kind of world or nation they wish to create, or the kind of people they want to serve and be. And if they don’t soon define what they stand for, these new nationalists could go down in history as just a severe irritant to the global order of the last three decades rather than as a living alternative to it. …”

Bro, you could always ask. You know where to find us.

Basically, nationalists stand for a politics that is grounded in realism and identity, and what flows from that is an iconoclastic attitude and a zealous defense of our concrete interests. In contrast, conservatives believe in idealism and abstract liberal principles. We cling to the particular. You cling to the universal.

“Even if it never could (or dared) describe the final end state of history, this creative power within globalism touches on deep millenarian impulses in the Western mind, implanted in it by Christianity, and later adopted by Whigs and Marxists — namely, the idea of eternal human progress and moral arcs bending across the universe. …”

Are those impulses synonymous with the West?

I don’t think so. They aren’t even synonymous with America. Here in the South, we have traditionally found that Eastern millenarian mindset to be ludicrous. It is a product of your own culture in a particular phase of its history. There’s no such thing as “eternal human progress” or “moral arcs bending across the universe.” As a matter of fact, the “moral arc” bending across the Dar al-Islam right now isn’t the same one that exists in the old bastions of Unitarianism.

“We know that nationalists are against multilateral globalist trade deals, but not all of them are mercantilists. We know they are against political correctness, but we don’t know if they are for restoring mid-20th century libertinism or if they are a creative pious remnant. In other words, this new nationalist movement does not yet have that suggestive power that globalism had.”

If nationalism is grounded in the particulars of identity, then shouldn’t we expect it to vary? The economic interests of, say, a Denmark are likely to differ from a continental sized republic like the United States. A traditionally non-Christian culture like a Japan will differ from a Germany.

About Hunter Wallace 12390 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

31 Comments

  1. I was hoping you would respond to this.

    Dougherty, Douthat and Continetti are shifting. American Affairs referenced Sam Francis.

  2. Typical conservative intellectual twaddle so as to confuse the confused and pretend its all a great plan and the normie conservative rube is part of it.

    This traitor is scribbling for bucks to hide the work of looters.

  3. Beware of the foolish civic nationalism argued at that new journal, which Dougherty cited with some praise. The journal, called American Affairs, is for cucks and reflects the establishment’s attempt to control the energies released by the Alt-Right.

  4. The moral arc of history bends in the direction of billionaires, because I hired a really strong guy from Norway to bend it.

    I am on the right side of history in the current year, because I have bought all the historians.

    I’m not afraid of the status quo, because I bought the status quo, in fact, I put it in the same Amazon cart that I used to buy my wife her daily allowance of 100 new pairs of shoes. (It saved me some shipping charges).

    Because when you’ve got the kind of money I do, you can buy both reality and history.

    Make my immigration reform comprehensive, please!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2e4c31e5f2b4022002390357629b9bd4b1788131b9a2367ca86add0d927c3b6f.jpg

    • I certainly hope so! There has been a lot of talk about “resistance” among WNs. It’s time to start going on the offensive.

  5. Its about race, it about resisting the idea that whites must be replaced by non whites, resisting the idea that races are equal, resisting the idea that whites exist to make non whites lives better and have to ignore their own interests, resisting the idea that whites must go extinct.

  6. After reading that article extolling the joys of (((globalism))) I’m reminded of why I cancelled my subscription to The Week years ago.

  7. This column is bogus; Dougherty asks questions that he doesn’t really want to be answered!

    He subliminally denies that we could be religious, racially aware, tribal, colonial, and merely knowing that we want to be rid of the Xenos in our midst… and that all of that is actually enough as a means to change the world. The reason why he doesn’t want the question to be answered is because he would have to then admit that everything he believes in, has failed.

    Which, of course, it has!

  8. A white nation should be free of races, cultures and religions that are not compatible with us.
    It should have leaders installed that serve us, not noisy minorities who shouldn’t be here anyway.
    It should make its own products that are protected by fair and reasonable trade barriers.
    We want a political and legal system that rrewards hard work and punishes wrong doing.
    A halt to truckloads of foreign aid being paid out to ungrateful failed states who give nothing back, except an endless supply of refugees- it isn’t fair.
    An end to all wars that don’t concern us. Muslims are who they are. We cannot change them. When they’re not fighting the West, they’re fighting each other- let them go for it and stop babysitting them. Its a waste of time, money and lives. Nobody cares when they only kill each other.
    Finally get leftwing poison out of our schools and instead instill in our children the importance of race , culture, Christianity, national pride and common decency.
    I could name others but you get the idea.

  9. What really gets me is that the idea of a moral arc through history is quite popular with atheists. Because a cold, lifeless universe just happened to impart a moral plan to a bunch of hairless, talking monkeys. This moral plan also just happens to coincide with the world view of upper class, white liberals.

    And they think Christians are ridiculous…

  10. It’s about white Supremacy, absolutely defined… Yesterday, today and tomorrow… And it will take the greatest of white men to make it a potent reality.

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