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From the UK: White pupils excluded from extra Saturday literacy lessons
There was some discussion at the end of the last CW thread about the purpose of race-based immigration policies. Why not just test directly for IQ? Why use race, which can only be a proxy for other desirable traits like IQ or low criminality? The simple answer is: to avoid situations like this!
In general, I think it's a mistake for ethnonationalists to focus so strongly on purportedly intrinsic psychological properties of certain groups, like IQ or criminality. It does leave you open to the question of why you're an ethno nationalist, instead of an IQ nationalist or a low-crime nationalist (a focus on crime rates in particular leads to consequences that are unpalatable for the far right: if your overriding goal is to reduce crime rates, then you should be trying to build a society that has as few males as possible!).
An argument for ethnonationalism that sidesteps these concerns is that racial discrimination and preferential race-based treatment are more difficult to implement in a racially homogeneous society. If everyone in your city is white, then it won't even make sense for the local school district to set up a special program for black children. Instead, they'll just direct their resources towards the one and only racial group that is actually present.
It will be objected that there can be intra-European ethnic conflicts as well. Why stop at European nationalism? Why not separate out, say, the Anglos and the Germans too, to make sure they don't start engaging in preferential ethnic treatment as well. To which I say: if that's what you want, then fine! If two European ethnic groups did get into an ethnic conflict, then I would recommend (as a possible option, assuming that reconciliation does not seem feasible) that they should split up and live apart from each other as well. But there is currently no such ethnic conflict. There are however active tensions between whites and other groups, so that's the level of analysis that people tend to work at. Ethnonationalism is not an a priori eternal first principle of political organization; it is a pragmatic proposal designed to ameliorate ongoing conflicts, the same way that a couple can propose a divorce if they aren't getting along.
Granted, I don't think a Saturday school program only for black children is a catastrophic loss for white children. I think the school system itself plays a rather small role in a child's "education" anyway, in comparison to genetics and the child's home environment. But it is symptomatic of how it is currently popular to show preferential treatment to non-whites in Western countries today. More sweeping examples would be university affirmative action (recently made illegal in the US, but, I don't think university admissions officers are simply going to give up consideration of race that easily) and corporate DEI initiatives. It simply wouldn't be as appealing for Disney to woke-ify their classic franchises if they were based in a country that was 95% white to begin with.
IQ is like strength. It measures performance.
Race is more like nationality, it's about measuring what team you're on.
Say aliens with 1000 IQ showed up tomorrow and harmed our interests by scooping up all the world's forests for their zoo or whatever. It makes no sense to support them just because they're high IQ. For that matter, it makes no sense for Englishmen to support fellow Englishmen who sell them out to foreign interests or exploit public resources for personal gain.
Intelligence is not an unalloyed good in all contexts - just consider our longstanding concerns about AI! The most important thing is what team one is on, capabilities are secondary. If someone is high IQ but uses that intellect to market addictive drugs or perpetrate financial scams, they're worse than their anti-social low IQ peers who tend to be less destructive.
Race, religion, culture, nationality, language are the surest ways of defining what team people are on, in that order. These factors last longer than political ideologies. See the conflicts between communist Russia and China, Vietnam and Cambodia.
Now some will say that different races can work in harmony under a single state. I agree. They can work in harmony, for a time. Yet there's nearly always someone on top, nearly always tension and an eventual break-up. Multiculturalism as we know it today has only really been tried since the 1960s. The Austrian empire ruled over diverse nationalities for centuries (and not nearly as diverse as we're talking about today), yet it still collapsed back into its constituent parts.
We grossly underestimate the importance of unity. What happens when there's a major, serious crisis on the scale of the world wars? Someone will lose, some countries will be put under incredible strain by defeat and recrimination. Multi-national states disintegrate, national states survive. Just imagine if your country suffered 1/10th as much as North Korea. Fifty years of harsh Japanese occupation, then a devastating failed war where every single urban centre was incinerated by the USAF such that people were living in holes in the ground. Then forty years of Stalinist dictatorship, a famine as your superpower ally disintegrated along with your trade, near total isolation from world markets (remember that North Korea is mountainous, cold and lacks much fertile land or oil), blatant hostility from another superpower (Axis of Evil speech)... and despite all that they still have thermonuclear weapons, ballistic missiles plus a huge army! If North Korea had been multi-ethnic, it would've fallen apart like Iraq and Syria. IQ is also a factor, Koreans are pretty smart.
Anyway, diversity isn't strength, unity is strength. Trading unity for brainpower makes the state fragile and more prone to internal conflicts. Everyone should be on the same team, especially when chips are down. This very story proves that the UK is not united, there are open divisions even in peacetime. Consider the RAF stories of whites being rejected, general diversity aspirations throughout the workforce. This is a bad sign!
Only if people choose to define themselves in those terms. For example, although there might be some American whites who choose to define themselves as being on the same "team" as whites in Great Britain and Australia, most of them would define themselves as being on the American "team." Every individual has dozens of identities, and it is not a given which one will be most salient.
This is remarkably ahistorical. The idea that "nationalities" exist is a comparatively recent one, as is the concomitant belief nationalism, i.e, the belief that each nationality has a right to it own state. Therefore, the argument it is impossible for one state to encompass more than one "nationality" is essentially circular; if people living in one state define themselves as belonging to different nationalities, then of course the state is going to have legitimacy problems. But, if they don't, then it won't.
Most importantly, the assumption that the fact that I identify with race X means that I see race X as my "team" (i.e. my nation, i.e, the identify to which I owe the greatest degree of loyalty) is wrong.
Sure, there is such a thing as American culture. It is possible to decenter the importance of some identities - religion is very important in Lebanon but less so in the US. But do you not see the huge importance of race in America or the UK? There's a huge diversity apparatus trying to allocate people of the right race in the right place. I've filled in job applications in the current year, I know this to be true. Simply being a citizen of a state doesn't cut it any more.
Really? There had never been nationalist uprisings against foreign rule before the 19th century? Nationalism got more popular and powerful then but nationalism has been a factor for all of human history. What about the Judeans rising up against Rome, was there not even a little nationalism there?
States can encompass multiple nations but it introduces fragilities that often prove harmful. You can lump Occitan and Brittany together, put Wessex and Northumberland and Scotland together with sound management. But East Anglia and Mogadishu or Papua New Guinea is a much bigger ask.
Putting you specifically to one side, if everyone in America is on the same team, why all the rioting and strife, why the existence of this website which primarily exists to discuss political conflict in the USA, why the massive and persistent variation in voting by race?
Ireland fought for freedom for 800 years, but according to this claim, only the last 150 were for nationalist reasons. I don't understand that claim at all. The big nations, like Italy and Germany were only created in the 19th century, but prior to that there were smaller nations, like Ulster or Saxony. Ancient Greece saw itself as a nation in comparison to the barbarians and came together to fight the Persians. Presumably there is a reason that people want to claim nationalism is a new idea, but it does seem to go back as far as 1066 and all that, if not further.
I don't know that even the last 150 years was for nationalist reasons, because I am not familiar enough with the specifics. Nationalism is a very specific concept: It is that every "nation" has a right to its own state. (What constitutes a "nation" is a more amorphous question, but sometimes "a people" is used in lieu of "a nation", which perhaps captures the concept better). Hence, the claim that "we should be independent because the English are oppressing us" is not a nationalist claim. Nor is "we should be independent because we were independent in the past." Nor is "we should be independent because our interests will be better served thereby." A nationalist reason is: "The Irish are a 'nation" (or, alternatively, a "people") distinct from the English. Therefore, because all nations/peoples have a right to their own state, we should be independent."
Note that this conversation is rooted in OP's claim that the dissolution of the Austrian empire was inevitable because it was multi-ethnic. The point is that it was not inevitable unless and until its constituent groups came to see themselves as "nations" and to adhere to the tenets of nationalism.
This seems to be older than 150 years to me. "A Nation Once Again", the Irish song, is 170 years old. Parnell's "No man has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation; no man has a right to say to his country—thus far shalt thou go and no further." refers to Ireland losing its parliament in 1800. Was O'Connell a nationalist when he said "“No person knows better than you do that the domination of England is the sole and blighting curse of this country. It is the incubus that sits on our energies, stops the pulsation of the nation's heart and leaves to Ireland, not gay vitality but horrid the convulsions of a troubled dream.”
After the war of independence in 1921, Ireland demanded "a self-governing Ireland with restitution of confiscated lands and churches, freedom of movement, and a strong Roman Catholic identity" exactly the same terms that O'Neill had asked for in November 1599. Few doubt that De Valera was a Nationalist. Why wasn't O'Neill one, given that he asked for identical terms?
Wikipedia writes:
This seems late to me, and 1169 is a more natural date, if not 1014, or earlier.
In the Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib (The War of the Irish with the Foreigners), which described the Battle of Clontarf the Irish were described as: brave, valiant champions; soldierly, active, nimble, bold, full of courage, quick, doing great deeds, pompous, beautiful, aggressive, hot, strong, swelling, bright, fresh, never weary, terrible, valiant, victorious heroes and chieftains, and champions, and brave soldiers, the men of high deeds, and honour, and renown of Erinn.
The foreigners as: the shouting, hateful, powerful, wrestling, valiant, active, fierce-moving, dangerous, nimble, violent, furious, unscrupulous, untamable, inexorable, unsteady, cruel, barbarous, frightful, sharp, ready, huge, prepared, cunning, warlike, poisonous, murderous, hostile Danars; bold, hard-hearted Danmarkians, surly, piratical foreigners, blue-green, pagan; without reverence, without veneration, without honour, without mercy, for God or for man.
Little has changed, and the foreigners still have blue-green hair.
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