Ethno-Culture: the real class act

Modern SJWs, the heirs of the 1950s New Left, have all but abandoned any residual faith in the working class. Today, what remains of the ‘Old Left’ continue to canonise the working class as the ‘chosen people’. But nowadays, at least in the post-industrial west, the working class, as a self-conscious force, has been rendered defunct. Any remaining class-consciousness is vague, nostalgic and ephemeral.  Expressly class-based solidarity has always been fleeting, momentarily flaring up now and then like bush fires through our recent history, soon burning out. So, if class stands on shifting sands in a state of flux, then ethno-culture, heritage, tradition and folk memory surely stand on more solid foundations. These organic features within humanity have been around a lot longer and the vast majority of people gravitate towards them. They prove much better cornerstones to rely on in the face of globalism. They are concepts that foster an authentic appeal, affecting genuine loyalties, leaving economic class categorisation as a drab, mechanistic afterthought in the human experience.

The ‘working class’, at least in ‘advanced’ western democracies, looks increasingly unlikely to make a political comeback – they are, generally speaking, just too comfortable to care. Affected by ‘affluenza’, all their potential receptiveness to class identity has been neutered by consumerism and comparative material wealth. Sure, the coming world slump may well result in mini skirmishes, cries of disdain, marching up and down – but there will be minimal movement to any semblance of class consciousness; patriotism will always muffle class loyalties. In the prevailing political culture – the neo-liberal agendas of the EU, World Bank, IMF and WEF will only seriously be challenged by the tide of patriotism and populism. Our job as Identitarians is to imbibe these two currents with our more advanced ideas and those of the European New Right. And because Identity England are an English organisation, we go about this in our own uniquely English way – we want to build Identitarian ideas with a strong English flavour because we are English and, to grow effectively here, Identitarian ideas cannot be manifest any other way.

Global capitalism has damaged national identity through the world markets at the expense of an ever-growing bland cosmopolitanism. But ask a sample of heads where they fit within the class system and there will be a lot more pondering than if you asked them to comment on their ethno-cultural or national identity. Feelings of tribal loyalty and patriotism naturally hit a common nerve in people, not because they suffer from a false consciousness, but because these emotions occur naturally in all human beings because we – all of us – are different. We feel closer to and develop kinship bonds with our own ethno-cultural communities. Most human beings adhere to in-group preference. Tribes tend to operate at arms-length from those with whom they don’t share common traits. This is not ‘good’ or ‘bad’ it is just how things are. None of this facilitates a breeding ground for, or the implication of, hatred or prejudice. Of course, good cordial relations can develop between different cultures and Identitarians would encourage this.

Global capitalism is harmful to ethno-culture, but it will not leave the world stage through the victory of the proletariat and the dawn of communism – those of us who are fed up with its detrimental effects stand more of a chance of revoking it by advocating third way economics which turn away from internationalist modes of commerce. Examples could include nationally inclined models including distributism – a community orientated economy which promotes ‘the little man’ and his family. These models encourage a common national interest (organic and genuine – not the Daily Mail variety!) in place of the sectional, antagonistic and fractious interests that dominate capitalist economies and societies. A rocky road it will be – history doesn’t do smooth transitions! Still, Identitarians can promote third way socio-economic models as their success will result in a unified, single, genuine national solidarity – meritocratic and socially just. It will render any class friction redundant. Truly ethno-culturally centred economies will not try to suffocate the competitive urge, rather they will keep it in check to the detriment of no one.

The real ideological battle lines today are nationalism versus internationalism, cosmopolitanism versus particularism. The real rebels are those who fight for national identity against the global village. For Identitarians, socialism – if it means anything, means social cohesion and national solidarity. The Old Left’s promotion of international class solidarity is an undesirable pipedream! Human beings are not defined by economics. For the Left, man is reduced to Homo Economicus – a blank sheet to draw on. But human beings are a lot more complicated. The only factor uniting the world’s proletariat is their (relative) economic position, but so much more divides them and this need not be a problem. Common origins, homelands, customs, culture, roots and heritage – these make up the real social glue in human societies and it’s through these that humanity is bound together in tribes. Tribes transcend class boundaries and operate through time and place. The human sense of place is as old as the hills. Even the former Communist regimes understood this and bent the knee to ‘National Communism’. This was the belief that emerged after World War II and held that the so-called workers or socialist states of Eastern Europe and elsewhere should follow a distinct national road to socialism – not an alien model imported from outside (i.e., the USSR). This was in order that the ruling Communist elites would thereby gain legitimacy in the eyes of the people they governed. Respective Communist parties played up pre-existing national identities, heroes, histories and myths in order to satisfy the people’s natural tribalism and cultural identity. For example, in the GDR the Communist Party made great play of glorifying Richard Wagner and Frederick the Great.

The experience of National Communism is very telling – these regimes soon found that they could not suppress the national and tribal spirit (just as they also found they could not suppress man’s natural inclination towards spirituality), so they had to make concessions. Fifty years of Communism never managed to wipe these tendencies out. Every regime recognised how powerful, ingrained and hard wired they were. No government anywhere has had to appease a ‘socialist’ spirit – it doesn’t exist, it is an academic venture. Sure, all over the world for hundreds and hundreds of years the elites have had to deal with various prevailing manifestations of justice from below, but leftism is an artificial phenomenon that has continually had to adapt to fit human realities. One major concession is the leftist championing of national liberation and self-determination (except in the European sense of course!). By acknowledging the urge for national sovereignty, Internationalists have had to acknowledge tribal differences. Against the class model, ethno-culture wins out every time. Because we cannot escape our common tribal origins that stretch back into unrecorded time, our history shapes us all. All members of a nation, ‘high’ and ‘low’, have a shared heritage and common destiny. History is not partisan – it overlaps and moulds a people organically out of their ancestral lands. The English for example, are just as much products of the crusades, Magna Carta, War of the Roses, the Glorious Revolution and the Reformation as they are the peasants’ revolt, the Levellers, the Swing Riots, Chartists and the General Strike.The high and the low intermingle to form one national myth. Rebels from English history are seen as national heroes not class warriors. Where it matters, an English dustman does have more in common with ALL of his ethno-cultural group (language, culture, behavioural peculiarities) than he does with a road sweeper in Soweto (and vice versa). Of course, in capitalist society there is no genuine national interest – the class system with all its vested interests, dictates otherwise. But Identitarians seek to build societies wherein each ethno-culture builds its own distinct community which will safeguard every one of its members just as in an extended family. That, of course is just what ethno-cultures really are.