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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.
I have a lot of trouble with this claim as it seems to me that we can find many precursors to nationalism before its supposed birth in the 19th century or with Kant. If the claim is that the idea that "nationalities" exist is recent, the idea that peoples exist is surely not. If the claim is that the idea that all peoples have an inherent right to govern their own nation is new, specific claims for self-government based on the differing origins and interests of the ruler and ruled are not.
The only type of nationalism I have done serious study on is Irish nationalism, and it seems to very much predate the 19th century. The earliest case for Irish independence I know of was first published in 1645 with the Disputatio Apologetica de jure Regni Hiberniae or An argument defending the right of the kingdom of Ireland by John O'Mahoney. Of the four reasons he gives for Ireland's right to independence consent of the governed (at least in the sense that the Irish kings only consented to the English claim under duress) is one.
If nationalism is defined as the universalisation of and international commitment to propogate what were before only specific claims for self-rule then this is a problem of definition and I can't refute it, but to say that this marks the beginning of the concept of nationalism as nationalist parties and partisans have seen it seems to ignore the giants we're standing on.
But, does O'Mahoney make a claim that people in Ireland identify as a separate nationality, and have an intrinsic right to a separate state on that basis alone, or does he merely that they did not consent to being ruled by the English? Those are very different claims. See, eg, the Declaration of Independence, which rests on an argument re the latter (specifically, that people have the right to withdraw their consent when government becomes destructive of the rights that govt is created to protect). An argument based on nationalism is that group X, because it is a "nation," has a right to self-determination, regardless of whether the imperial power ruling over them is just, unjust, originally based on consent, or whatever. But that is not the claim made in the Declaration of Independence.
Also, how much was the uprising in Ireland tied to the ongoing religious conflict in England and environs? it is one thing to say, "we are being oppressed by outsiders, so we should be independent of them." It is a different thing to say, "all nations (ie. nationalities) have the right to self-determination. The Irish are a nation; therefore we have the right to self-determination.
It seems to me that "precursors" is doing a lot of work there. All historically important ideas have precursors, after all.
I'm not sure but the distinction between 'Gael' and 'Englishman' was very common and goes back at least as far as the 12th century and the 'Gael' and 'Gall' (foreigner i.e Vikings) the 9th.
If they don't consent to being ruled by the English than what's the alternative? A concept of self-rule is implicit in the complaint.
It was intensified by the religious split but it long predated it. The Norman conquerers basically became Gaelicised and adopted the local language, loyalties and customs and England's defacto holdings shrank. Things naturally tended towards Ireland being its own political world until the English reasserted their claim in the 16th century.
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