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As an individual, he was world-historically brilliant. The human condition, however, is not exhausted by exceptional individuals. The fact that France has repeatedly taken the wrong side of European history makes me glad he lost. Compare Germany, which was a consistent force for good (BRD GmbH being of course less German than Vichy France was French).
Basically, my litmus test is if someone is allowed to be mentioned in a neutral or positive context by the mainstream, he’s not the hero my people needs – not the Man against Time.
I am trying to figure out what the "wrong side of European history" means. In the American sense, it usually means "bad ideas that deserved to be crushed". In the European sense, I'm thinking more "unable to exercise one's advantages", as they were largely playing from the same ideological rulebook.
(I hope I'm wrong about this, and look forward to any effortpost this inspires.)
Nations are rational agents, but also memetic ecosystems. Few memes have caused as much damage to European civilization (of which North America is an indelible part) as those of equality, civic nationalism, radical individualism, class struggle and plutocratic free market capitalism. France often pioneered and served as a platform for such ideas, which is how it became an inspiration for many generations of subversives, though of course it wasn’t alone in this. Already in the days of Napoleon this led to disastrous consequences, such as granting citizenship to non-European aliens who had been selected for contempt towards the majority population. Today, of course, no one from that era would register as an egalitarian – indeed they would be considered fascists, i.e. non-persons. But so would American WWII vets. This doesn’t change the fact that in retrospect, we know exactly what they fought and died for.
The story of European wars and alliances is a sad one characterized by misadventure, greed and shortsightedness. I do not wish to imply they were directly driven by ideology like the American Civil War was, only that my race would most likely be better off if they played out differently. As things stand, and as of course you know, we are going to become a minority in our own homelands in a few generations, and most of us are so demoralized they don’t see any problem with that, so forgive me for perhaps being a bit melancholic.
A form of civic nationalism worked well for Rome for hundreds of years. I doubt that Rome could ever have managed to extend its power to the entire Mediterranean if they had stuck to an ethnic nationalism model that privileged ethnic Romans hugely above all others.
One could also argue that civic nationalism is what bound France into a nation that has endured the test of time. There was a time hundreds of years ago when the people who inhabited what is now France did not think of themselves as being part of one ethnicity.
There is also, of course, America - the most successful European-based country of all time. The mostly English founding population managed to successfully integrate a very numerous German population, and then other ethnicities as well.
Ethnic wilting was contemporaneous with the decline and fall of the western Roman empire, if not its proximate cause. Hardly a point in favour of "civic nationalism"; the Germanic barbarians that Rome allowed to settle in its lands from the 3rd century onwards were never assimilated, and to use anachronistic language, formed a fifth column.
As for America - large-scale Irish Catholic (and later German) migration was the proximate cause of the collapse of the sort of agrarian yeoman republic that most of that American rebel leaders had envisioned. The sort of Irish people that showed up en masse in the 1840s - starving, illiterate, destitute, non-anglophone and uncivilised - ruptured the white/other distinction that had bounded the USA's participatory democracy for white landowning men, and necessitated the shift to managed democracy: yellow press, chickenfeed for the hoi polloi, the impossibility of complex public arguments and time horizons beyond the next election.
Were I making an argument for democratic universalism - I wouldn't - but if I were, I'd pick an example where a state identity has authentically and comprehensively erased localist ethnic distinctions into a single homogeneous "the people". 19th century France is actually not a bad example. Any country you can think of where ethnic division is still noticeable has not, ipso facto, succeeded in democratic levelling.
I am not arguing for a form of civic nationalism so extreme and unbounded that one decides to allow large numbers of unassimilated and highly militarized ethnicities into one's lands, and even makes them an essential part of your military forces. I think that is going too far. However, that does not mean that a more circumscribed form of civic nationalism does not work. Rome would never have become a superpower to begin with if it had stuck to ethnonationalism, it had to switch to civic nationalism in order to become a superpower empire.
As for America, the thing is, the agrarian yeoman republic would have been swept away by economic changes one way or another. After the industrial revolution, whether America had imported millions of Irish and other people or not, it would have been forced to switch to a different social/economic/political system one way or another because otherwise it would not have been able to compete with other great powers.
Italians are not the same thing as Romans. They did not see themselves as Romans. My understanding is that the Roman Republic's early rise to power was based in part on their willingness to assimilate other Italian powers into a new political concept rather than just attempting to utterly crush, enslave, subjugate, and kill them.
And this was specific to italic peoples, it was not extended to iberians or illyrians or celts, among other early non-italic conquests.
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