The Power of Ethnonationalism
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So grave was the crisis in western China that President Hu Jintao canceled a meeting with President Obama, broke off from the G8 summit and flew home.
By official count, 158 are dead, 1,080 injured and a thousand arrested in ethnic violence between Han Chinese and the Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uighurs of Xinjiang. That is the huge oil-rich province that borders Pakistan, Afghanistan and several Central Asian countries that seceded from the Soviet Union.
Uighur sources put the death toll much higher.
The Communist Party chief in Xinjiang has promised to execute those responsible for the killings.
In 1989, fear that what was happening in Eastern Europe might happen in Beijing produced Tiananmen Square. The flooding of Chinese troops into Xinjiang bespeaks a fear that what happened to the Soviet Union could happen to China. Unlike Mikhail Gorbachev, the Chinese, as they showed in Tibet, will wage civil war to crush secession.
Already, Beijing has struggled to ensure perpetual possession of Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet — half of the national territory — by moving in millions of Han Chinese, swamping the indigenous peoples, as they did in Manchuria.
The larger issue here is the enduring power of ethnonationalism — the drive of ethnic minorities, embryonic nations, to break free and create their own countries, where their faith, culture and language are predominant. The Uighurs are such a people.
Ethnonationalism caused the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, triggered World War I in Sarajevo, and tore apart the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. Ethnonationalism birthed Ireland, Turkey and Israel.
Ethnonationalism in the 1990s tore apart the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and broke up Czechoslovakia, creating two-dozen nations out of three. Last August, ethnonationalism, with an assist from the Russian Army, relieved Georgia of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Russia has its own ethnic worries in Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia, whose Moscow-installed president was nearly blown to pieces two weeks ago and where a Chechen convoy was ambushed last week with 10 soldiers killed.
The ethnonationalism that pulled Ireland out of the United Kingdom in 1921 is pulling Scotland out. It split the Asian subcontinent up into Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Iran, Iraq and Pakistan are all threatened.
Persians are a bare majority against the combined numbers of Azeris, Kurds, Arabs and Baluch. Each of those minorities shares a border with kinfolk — in Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Iraq and Pakistan.
Turkey has fought for decades against Kurd ethnonationalism.
If one were to wager on new nations, Kurdistan and Baluchistan would be among the favorites. And Pashtun in Pakistan outnumber Pashtun in Afghanistan, though in the latter they are the majority.
In Africa, the savage attacks on the Kikiyu by Luo manifest a resurgent tribalism, as did the horrors of Rwanda, where Tutsi in the hundreds of thousands were massacred by Hutu.
President Clinton may have apologized to the Africans for not sending troops to stop the genocide in Rwanda, but if the America of Obama is into interventionism to protect human rights, Africa in the 21st century should provide us plenty of opportunity.
Evo Morales in Bolivia, Ollanta Humala in Peru and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez are stoking the embers, goading the Indian populations, the indigenous peoples, to take back what the white man took 500 years ago. They have met with no small success.
The contrast between insouciant America and serious China today is instructive. China is protectionist; America free trade. China is nationalist; America globalist. China’s economy is export-driven; America’s base is consumption. China saves; America spends. China uses its foreign exchange to lock up overseas resources; America uses foreign aid for humanitarian assistance to failed states. Behaving like ruthlessly purposeful 19th-century Americans, China grows as America shrinks.
Where Beijing floods its borderlands with Han to reduce indigenous populations to minorities, and stifles religious, ethnic and linguistic diversity, America, declaring, “Diversity is our strength!” invites the whole world to come to America and swamp her own native-born.
Observing the lightning breakup of the Soviet Union, the Chinese take ethnonationalism with deadly seriousness. American’s elite regard it an irrelevancy, an obsession only of the politically retarded.
After all, they tell us, we were never blood-and-soil people, always a propositional nation, a nation of ideas. Our belief in democracy, diversity, and equality define us and make us different from all other nations.
Indeed, we now happily predict the year, 2042, when Americans of European ancestry become a minority in a country whose Founding Fathers declared it set aside for “ourselves and our posterity.”
Without the assent of her people, America is being converted from a Christian country, nine in 10 of whose people traced their roots to Europe as late as the time of JFK, into a multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural Tower of Babel not seen since the late Roman Empire.
The city farthest along the path is Los Angeles, famous worldwide for the number, variety, and size of its ethnic and racial street gangs.
Not to worry. It can’t happen here.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM
Filed under: Foreign policy, Immigration, Trade, World
“America, declaring, “Diversity is our strength!” invites the whole world to come to America and swamp her own native-born.”
Yeah right…
I don’t know where to begin in deconstructing your abject racism and faithism. The United States is not a Christian Nation. The majority of its people are Christian. We have always welcomed multiple ethnicities and cultures. Equating skin color and religious differences with crime and sin is abhorrent.
Do you fear whites being the minority? Which race is at the center of anti-government violence right now? Tower of Babel indeed, it’s already happened among whites.
I’m not sure if you’re celebrating China’s oppression or denouncing it. You don’t really make that clear.
America is being swamped by an invasion of third world people. As usual, Pat is right on.Why should this country be turned into a dumping ground for third worlders.Look at Los Angeles.
Rossi you are incorrect my friend when you said, “We have always welcomed multiple ethnicities and cultures.” When the US was founded only whites were citizens and only whites could become citizens. Read the Naturlization Act of 1790. This nation was set up for whites by whites. Asians weren’t even allowed to become citizens until 1952. So much for your use of the word “always.”
Fran Rossi wrote:
“We have always welcomed multiple ethnicities and cultures….”
Just parenthetically speaking I don’t think that’s so, Fran; I suspect that there’s been quite a bit of racial and ethnic and other forms of discrimination embedded in the history of who we have welcomed and who we have not.
But I agree that’s always somewhat been our ideal, which leads to my main question to you which is how you deal with the argument that the ideal—of welcoming “multiple ethnicities and cultures”—at least theoretically contains the seeds of its own destruction by also seemingly welcoming in people who, given the chance, will *not* adhere to our color/race/culture/ethnicity/tribal/ and etc.-blind ideal?
I don’t know for sure, and and even if so maybe there’s an anodyne explanation for it, but for instance I’ve heard that the Hispanic group “La Raza” (whose name does expressly translate into “The Race,”) has as its official “motto” or whatever something along the lines of “For those in The Race Everything, for those Outside nothing.”
So just how liberal is your view of the extent to which we should abide by our ideal? To the point where it destroys itself? And if you agree that it’s still the right of others coming into this country to reject our ideal, well then why isn’t it the right of others already here to simply *change* their view of what our ideal ought to be? Especially if it’s merely a change so as to maintain the most fundamental part of the ideal?
At least theoretically I think you have to agree it’s an issue, no?
Cheers,
For those who accuse Pat of blatant racism and prejudice…please publish your name and workplace so your job, income and livelihood can be replaced with an immigrant and we can double your taxes to pay for the social services they need and the police to protect us from their gangs.
Why should those of us who are native born patriotic US citizens be forced to pay for your open border diversirty high immigration bull sh*t.
If you favor immigration…please pay for it and let those of us who oppose it opt out.
I would be all for welcoming immigrants from all over the world and integrating them into our national values, except that we no longer have anything to assimilate people into.
If our culture were healthy, then immigration would be a good thing, no question about it. Today, however, we don’t have a national culture or any defining ethos, so the newcomers are getting integrated into a mess. They suffer under all the confusions of the present but have none of the benefits of posterity.
I agree with the most of the article, but I doubt if Americans deeply understand the essence of Caucasian relations.
“Last August, ethnonationalism, with an assist from the Russian Army, relieved Georgia of Abkhazia and South Ossetia”.
In this case ‘ethnonationalism’ is the external aggression not the internal conflict. Georgia is not a superpower or empire. We Georgians lived in peace with Osetians and Abkhazians till Russia came to Caucasus and we are able to find common human ground with Caucasian ethnic groups, not because we are good and kind, but because we have similar problems and interests. We are old neighbours and relatives, after all.
Scott,
To be precise, America was founded for Englishmen by Englishmen. Read the works of 19th century naturalists like Frank Norris. All non-Englishmen are of an inferior breed that should not be allowed to mix with us.
Seriously, there’s nothing wrong with a broad base of national/ethnic backgrounds in American society. The concern that conservatives like PJB have is that there is no end to the constant ebb and flow of new individuals in and out of American society. Modern transportation and technology make it easy to come here, make money, send it elsewhere, and then leave when you’re done– all while having never read, listened to, watched or spoken the American language.
American immigration history includes long periods of highly restricted immigration– periods in which people of diverse backgrounds learned to live with one another, talk like one another, marry one another, and make little Americans.
Most importantly, these people from diverse backgrounds were expected to learn to be Americans themselves. They were proud of the prospect. Today, the celebration of diversity over American-ness (new word?) has been institutionalized. Who determines what American-ness is? Americans.
So PJB’s question, and mine, is how can the contents of the pot melt, if they’re constantly changing? Futhermore, do the current contents not have a right to say, “Enough; the pot is full?”
Fran Rossi writes: “Equating skin color and religious differences with crime and sin is abhorrent.”
Then 2 sentences later “Which race is at the center of anti-government violence right now?”
Not sure exactly what anti-government violence you are referring to, but clearly you are implying that the white race is at the center of it. You completely contradicted yourself.
Furthermore the idea that as Americans “We have always welcomed multiple ethnicities and cultures” is complete nonsense.
My great-grandfather came in 1910 and my mother in 1959. I never wondered for a moment what my nationality was or where my allegiance lay. I am an American.
But USA used to understand that we have a different form of government than other countries. In the 19th century, almost everybody who came to America came from a monarchy. They had to learn how to govern themselves in a Republic – and I might add that most of them were more than eager to do so. They used to come for freedom, i.e. the right to rule themselves.
Now people come to share in “The American way of life” which no longer has anything to do with self-rule. Now it’s about self-indulgence.
We bid farewell to the Republic of virtue founded by our (Yes, mine too!) founding fathers along time ago. Franklin was prophetic. We haven’t kept it.
I think that’s behind a lot of PJB’s concerns.
Most of us have watched this before. Rutger Hauer plays Pat Buchanan (representing 200 years of US Establishment), Harrison Ford plays Obama (thinks he’s a white guy, but is really the same as the slaves were), and Sean Young plays the US Economy (Edward James Olmos plays the republicans, walking with a crutch, making little figurines out of scraps of paper, betting against the economy):
Mankind kills God:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CkiDuHrxsM
Rutger Hauer on what it was like to play “white people”:
“I want more life, f**ker” – was he atheist?
“I want more life, father” – was he christian?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbhFZihpGfY
Are the masters really the slaves? Do we regret giving “a hand up”?
The guy in the hat and trenchcoat, right at the end, represents the republicans, betting against the economy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R72dbbtcuO0
But Sean Young (the girl, playing the economy), will live to be made love to, by Harrison Ford (playing Obama and ACORN), who appears to be a white guy, but is really a replicant himself (from the slave race)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fCeH-WnJYM
The economy (the girl), making out with what looks like a white guy who is really a descendent of the slaves, after the death of the previous white slaves who thought they were superior and in charge, while the maker lies dead in a sarcophagus at the top of the glass pyramid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9KAqhbIZ7o
Like I said, we’ve seen all this before…
But what do we do, Pat? This article makes me sad and angry, because as an American originalist I am paralyzed for doing anything for fear of professional repercussions.
I really think it’s too late.
It’s not just ethnic lobbies, leftists and the left-liberal establishment that have opened the borders up in this country at an assimilation-impossible rate (although it’s primarily left-wing policies inhibiting assimilation). Think of the business interests trying to drive down the labor wages. Think of the Corporatists trying to grow the American and NAFTA market ever bigger. Think of the Capitalist internationalists who dream that one day the world will be borderless in service of their ideology of expedited trade and maximized profits.
America sold its soul to Big Government and Corporatism ages ago, so little surprise that today its leadership is basically comprised of the money-worshipping Right and the government-worshipping Left.
We need to devolve corrupt government in order to restore the moral authority of what the Founders identified as our Creator, because life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness cannot be undertaken where chaos, Corporatism, and the heavy hand of government reigns.
Congratulations M. Patrick J. Buchanan
Here is the title of the American Conservative :
July 14, 2003 Decline of the Dollar
August 11, 2003 Death of manufacting
February 10, 2003 living in the bubble
October 25, 2004 ethnic electorate
About the pest of the ethnonationalism :
The concept is in the natural law , but it’s also in the natural law to create a competition ( via the Federal ) among the factions for the commonwealth of everybody.
An example of the new trend is the ‘democratic’ ethnonationalism ( Quebec for exemple , with 5 000 000 of Quebeccers ( by blood ) take power on the land equal of 85% of Mexico!
Pat writes: “Last August, ethnonationalism, with an assist from the Russian Army, relieved Georgia of Abkhazia and South Ossetia”
Do you believe that one becomes “ethnic” by reason of citizenship alone? If not, then how was Russian involvement in northern and western Georgia driven by ethnonationalism?
The Ossetians were given Russian passports, and under that pretext, Moscow declared them to be “Russian”… ethnonationalism indeed…
Ordinarily I read and enjoy Pat’s work, and that of TAC, but you chaps have to understand that we don’t live in the 1600s… when one country sneezes today, half that hemisphere is likely to catch cold. There is no place for isolationism in today’s world. The Georgians represent US strategic interests, and there is no shame in us acting accordingly.
I see Buchananan’s point in this article and I think increasing racialism amongst minorities will increase hostility amongst all groups. The identity politics supported by modern liberalism asserts that individuals are defined by their ethnic or racial make-up and this in turn increases ethnocentric tendencies.
I post extensively about racial issues at my blog. Here’s a post where I discuss how whites should approach the issue of race in America.
Pro-White?
Good column. One could argue Sarah Palin, to many whites, is an ethnonationalist leader however flawed.
Pat Buchanan takes the correct Long View as to how the
concentrations of people(Illegal and Legal) loyal to other than Host Country interests can Destabilize,Balkanize and Subvert the Laws and Culture of any Country that allows it. England,France and Italy have
now seen their error and are now moving against illegal immigration
forcefully and are not so happy with the E.U.!
I pray I am wrong on this one!
All signs are out there as anyone with eyes can see.
It will not be too long before the official American language becomes Spanish.
And, the Muslims are growing at every corner in America.
Current U.S. President is a de facto Muslim man. Islam has taken its roots firmly in the White House.
Interesting- this fear of ethnonationalism is itself ethnonationalist. What a bunch of fascist/mercantalist crap. What, trying to reinvigorate the Know Nothings, Mr. Buchanan?
This is probably the worst article Buchanan has ever written. Maybe I am missing the point, but is he suggesting expulsion of non-Europeans?
Kilroy is here. Thanks Kilroy. We Georgians do not want American soldiers to come and fight in our ethno-political war. We would be grateful, if you understand us and back morally in our fight for freedom.