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A more general reflection from yesterday: white nationalism (even and especially in its explicit forms) rarely justifies itself by overt appeal to whiteness. It ties itself to things that seem unquestionably good, and then uses them to ground/motivate white homogeneity.
Think—family, jobs, service, children, social uplift. One of the things that has struck me reading white nationalist material is how frequently invectives against non-white folks frame motivation in terms of love; love of ‘country,’ love of ‘neighbor.’
And it’s effective. Because to folks susceptible to this reasoning, it seems as if this is the only logic that can follow: ‘if I care about these things (and who wouldn’t!), then I must take this position.’ C.f. the Anthem protest discourse in the US.
If you criticize the white nationalistic use of the object meanwhile, clearly you hate the object.
Anyway: white nationalism is a discourse of love before it’s a discourse of hate, it rarely shows its literal colors in public, and it insidious in both these ways.
Anyway: white nationalism is a discourse of love before it’s a discourse of hate, it rarely shows its literal colors in public, and it insidious in both these ways.
*is, not it. Dammit!
(This is very much thinking about the public facing side of white nationalism, btw. In ‘private’, there’ll be no hesitation grounding itself in the superiority of ‘white culture’.)
