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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'm not so sure that's actually the case. You can "choose" not to define yourself as Armenian, but that isn't going to change how the Committee of Union and Progress treats you. Rachel Dolezal chooses to identify herself as being on the same "team" as black people, but I don't think the world actually treats her that way - they treat her as white, regardless of how she chooses to define herself. The external world absolutely uses these traits to identify and categorise people, and while you can disagree with that assignment that isn't going to change how other people treat you.
Could you please provide a lot more elaboration on this? I can find evidence for the existence of the word "gentile" remarkably far back in history, and the Roman concept of Natio very obviously predates the peace of Westphalia. There's a concept here that has clearly been in use for recorded history, and I want to know what actually distinguishes nationality in the sense that you're describing it from the historically related terms and concepts.
But your claim was specifically about self-identity
Your claim was also about the political ramifications of group self-identity, and the impossibility of long-term unity among groups. The example of Rachel Dolezal does not seem relevant to that claim.
You also made the claim that "Race, religion, culture, nationality, language are the surest ways of defining what team people are on, in that order." The choice I referred to was re the "in that order" claim. (Note, by the way, the abject failure of the pan-Arabism and pan-African movements).
The issue is not whether or not people divided the world into groups, nor that they were able to understand that some people spoke different languages or practiced different religions. The issue is the political relevance thereof, because that was the claim that you made. What distinguishes the concept of the "nation" once the concept of "nationalism" developed is that is inherently a political concept: Nationalism states that every "nation" has a right to its own state. So, of course once the constituent groups of the Austrian empire (and of the Ottoman empire) began seeing themselves as "nations" rather than as simply interest groups or other subnational groups, those empires became imperiled.
I'm terribly sorry but you appear to have made a mistake(don't worry I've made it on here before, and I think quite possibly with you in particular!) - I'm not who you were arguing with and didn't make any of those claims. That said it seems like I deserve some of the blame if I missed the context of the points in your post.
No, the reason I used the term gentile is because it quite literally translates to "nations", at least as far as I can see in every single source - though I freely admit to not being able to speak ancient Hebrew and hence am relying on the work of others. The jews saw the people around them as "the nations" and even used the same word to refer to Judah - these people were very much using the term nation in the same sense that people do today, and I don't think the idea that they didn't explicitly state that Israel has a right to exist means that they aren't referring to a nation. There's very clearly a continuity of concept here and I don't believe it is worthwhile to say that "nationality" didn't exist in the past when it seems to me what you're actually saying is that the term nation acquired certain political connotations in the 19th century that it did not explicitly have previously.
Yes, sorry I did confuse you with OP.
But I believe that is a different meaning of "nation." In particular, the reference to Israel indicates the use of "nation" as a synonym for "state." But Israel is not a "nation" in the sense meant re nationalism. The Jews, in the eyes of Zionists, anyhow, are a "nation." So are the Kurds (in their own eyes), the Basques (ditto), etc. Israel is a state, or more specifically, a "nation-state.".
Part of my problem here is that I am not saying anything idiosyncratic. Rather, I am simply stating the standard understanding of historians and political scientists, which is why I said OP's claim re the dissolution of the Austrian empire was ahistorical: It is inconsistent with the standard scholarly understanding. And, there is a lot of scholarship on this; nationalism is possibly the single most historically significant idea to be developed in the last 300 years (other than classical liberalism and, perhaps, Marcism). Now, perhaps that understanding is incorrect. Perhaps the concept of nationalism is much older than they say. But, it seems to me that in order to show that, one must engage directly with those claims, which I don’t see happening thus far.
Sorry if I was being unclear again here, but I was talking about the ancients - I am not so sure that the Kingdom of Israel qualifies as a nation-state, especially when you had the Kingdom of Judah right next door. But the main reason I had for bringing up the ancient hebrews is that the term goyim has historically been translated as "nations", and the Romans had their Natio. There's clearly a concept here that people have been using for thousands of years, and our modern conception of the term nation is very much a development of that idea, especially when the concept of a "right to exist" would be nonsensical in the context of the late Bronze age.
This starts getting into murky territory and playing games with language, because I think that the Romans and Greeks of antiquity actually did have a national identity. What exactly was it that united the Achaeans, Dorics, Ionians and Aeolians? They recognised each other as related, and the Romans just called them the Greeks. And speaking of Greeks and Romans, which were the Byzantines? Just to clarify, I'm not saying that nationalism as we know it was a serious force or motivating factor in people's lives, but it very much seems to me like there's a continuity of concept here that people have been aware of at some level for a considerable amount of time, to the point that we are still using the same words they did when we describe it.
One thing it is not, is playing games with language. When historians talk about nationalism and national identity, they mean something very specific. I am no expert on the ancient Greeks, but when you say, "What exactly was it that united the Achaeans, Dorics, Ionians and Aeolians?," isn’t the answer, nothing? Did they see themselves as one people, or four? The mere fact that they saw themselves as related is not particularly relevant --so do Americans, Canadians, Aussies, and Brits. Nor is it relevant that the Romans saw them as Greeks, because the concept of the nation is all about self-identification.
More importantly, this is all a bit off topic. The modern concept of the nation might have had a precursor or two; after all, the idea must have come from somewhere. And the Jews, being the victim of an expulsion and having been treated as "others" for a long time, are a likely candidate, because self-identity as a nation often grows from being othered, as well as from historical events like expulsions (the residents of Palestine, for example, probably thought of themselves as Arabs, rather than Palestinians, pre-1948). But the initial claim, that a multiracial state is impossible to maintain, because look at the Austrian empire, is based on an assumption about the nature of identity which is inconsistent with the scholarly understanding thereof.
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