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It's a little unclear where the distinction lies between the two. "White nationalist" overlaps with and kinda implies "white supremacist". After all, the idea

• logicalmonster 3y ago
  >It's a little unclear where the distinction lies between the two. "White nationalist" overlaps with and kinda implies "white supremacist". I don't think this distinction is unclear. In and of itself, a racial nationalist's beliefs might be something close to "I prefer to live in a country with my own people." In and of itself, a racial supremacist's beliefs might be something close to "My people are inherently superior and should rule over others." Anyway, I'm mainly just interested in this person's starting point and the effect that his trip had on him, as well as calling out the media for not being precise about these issues. Nationalist and Supremacist are not synonyms: that's lazy click-baiting journalism.
  • jqpabc123 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • nyolfen 3y ago
      i am reliably informed that this nation was founded upon genocide
      • failbuffer 3y ago
        While acknowledging its sins, America should ultimately be judged by its triumphs.
        • krapp 3y ago
          America should be judged by the way it acknowledges its sins, because its triumphs more often than not are the inheritance of those sins.
          • nyolfen 3y ago
            “Of the Gods we believe, and of man we know, that by a law of their nature, wherever they can rule they shall. This law was not made by us, and we are not the first to have acted on it. We did but inherit it, and shall bequeath it to all time. And we know that you and all mankind, if you were as strong as we are, would do as we do.”
      • jqpabc123 3y ago
        Yes. And it was as much an act of oppression and "supremacy" then as it is now. "White nationalists" are really just "supremacists" attempting (unsuccessfully) to avoid the negative implications. Oppression of "non-whites" is implied by their stated objectives since it is the only realistic way to achieve them.
        • nyolfen 3y ago
          my point was highlighting the incoherence of appealing to tradition
          • _cenw 3y ago
            "America is a nation of immigrants" isn't an appeal here, it's a statement of fact. Ethnic homogeneity, by any definition of white, would require removal of very large parts of the population.
            • nyolfen 3y ago
              "america is a nation of immigrants" makes a normative claim ("we should be in favor of immigration") based on historical fact ("people moved here in the past"). using one to justify the other is what is called "an appeal to tradition". why is this historical fact privileged over the historical fact of genocide? this is an appeal to a tradition among many. let me know if you need your hand held further.
              • jqpabc123 3y ago
                why is this historical fact privileged over the historical fact of genocide? The pertinent fact is that immigrants are here now --- this is not just history or tradition, it is current reality. Genocide would be an amoral effort to alter this existing reality and enforce "white nationalism" --- by those who obviously think skin color makes them "superior" in some way and grants them to right to oppress or even kill "other" immigrants. Attempting to justify this by past genocide is an "appeal to tradition".
              • 3y ago
    • NoRelToEmber 3y ago
      > Nothing short of genocide can realistically create this here. What about white flight and gentrification? As far as I'm aware, there are extensive legal and governmental measures in place in the US (such as placing low-income housing deliberately to decrease homogeneity [1]) to prevent people from ethnically self-sorting. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show_Me_a_Hero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show_Me_a_Hero
  • toiletfuneral 3y ago
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  • tjr225 3y ago
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  • AlexandrB 3y ago
    The distinction is unclear because "my own people" is such a nebulous concept when you're talking about a nation of millions. For example, for a "white nation", does "my own people" include Dutch Quakers? What about Irish Catholics? What about Italians? What about Jews? You will get a different answer depending on which white nationalist you ask. Thus the common element among many white nationalists is not actually wanting to live with one's own people, but exclusions of specific outgroups that are deemed inferior.
    • TheMode 3y ago
      "my own people" in this case means "people that look like me, and have a somewhat similar culture/lifestyle". So obviously it is a bit unclear and you won't be able to get a perfect list of allowed/not allowed group, but it does not imply inferiority at all.
      • AlexandrB 3y ago
        The average Christian white nationalist has more in common, culturally, with a Muslim immigrant from the Middle East than with a staunch atheist like myself. But I would probably be welcomed in a "white nation" because of my appearance. If we're being very generous, white nationalism is intellectually lazy since it uses superficial traits like skin color as shorthand for culture/lifestyle when the two are, at best, loosely connected. But I think it's extremely naive to look at the history of white nationalist ideas and assume that superiority/inferiority is not implicit in the ideology.
        • TheMode 3y ago
          It is definitely lazy and superficial, but it does not necessarily make for a terrible indicator. We are much more receptive to color than small shape variation, by removing the former you are preventing (or at the very least mitigating) comparison and the creation of stereotypes. Now I am not from the US so I won't comment about history, and I can fully believe that there is some link between being a white nationalist and believing one "race" to be superior to the others, but I do not believe that this is a reason enough to disqualify the idea.
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • mindslight 3y ago
    Do we really need journalists and readers spending effort dwelling on the intellectual distinctions between white supremacism and white nationalism? Is that a topic of discussion our society needs to focus on? What practical difference does it make in describing existing political movements? If there were some white nationalist group that espoused moving to predominantly white countries (or really starting their own country [0]), while being completely tolerant of the domestic state of affairs and distancing themselves from those who seek to turn this has-always-been-diverse country into their desired ethnostate, then perhaps the distinction would be relevant. But lacking that, it's a distinction without a difference. [0] I don't know that there are any countries that are predominantly "white" but not better defined by a more specific term. It would seem that "white" nationalism is itself the product of "miscegenation" between various traditional nationalities. Nobody really balks at "$traditionally_white_nationality pride", or even larger pan- terms like European or Slavic pride. It's the attempt to take credit for nothing more than a lighter skin tone that is the problem.
    • BossHogg 3y ago
      Dwelling on the minutiae is necessary for those who espouse such beliefs as part of the process of (re)normalizing their views.
  • _cenw 3y ago
    White nationalists are usually ethnostate advocates with a veneer of "peaceful displacement" - a thing that doesn't exist. When pressed, their ideology always turns into white supremacy, genocide or both.
    • bananabiscuit 3y ago
      So does that mean that the peaceful displacement of whites in their own countries in Europe is a genocide or non-white supremacy?
      • _cenw 3y ago
        Ah, we've reached the great replacement. No, it is not. Populations naturally evolve, but they never spontaneously evolve to whatever your arbitrary definition of pure white is. Nobody is orchestrating this, and "white" people (quotes because that's quite a moving target) aren't going extinct. Low birth rates aren't replacement, and unless you want to blame our standard of living, they aren't genocide either. I guess it'd be a more interesting question if you asked who caused the upcoming global climate refugee crisis.
  • GloomyBoots 3y ago
    > In and of itself, a racial supremacist's beliefs might be something close to "My people are inherently superior and should rule over others." Supremacism in this context means wanting your group to have control in a multiethnic state. It’s not intrinsically tied to questions of inherent superiority or global domination. So not that different from nationalism.
• andsoitis 3y ago
  Analysis of the distinction between white nationalism and white supremacism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_nationalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_nationalism Racial nationalism (e.g. white nationalism) is an ideology that advocates a racial definition of national identity.
  • jqpabc123 3y ago
    a racial definition of national identity In other words, it endows one chosen race of immigrants with special qualities and status that makes it "superior" to others. And this special quality of "superiority" (skin color) is not earned but rather gifted. Sounds kinda racist to me.
    • HKH2 3y ago
      It's very difficult for a non-Chinese person to get citizenship in China. Chinese people like interacting with people of other races, but it goes without saying that China is for the Chinese. Racism doesn't require a sense of superiority, but rather a preference for race(s). I'm not offended that I can't get citizenship in China. Do you think they think they're better than you?
      • jqpabc123 3y ago
        Racism doesn't require a sense of superiority, but rather a preference for race(s). Yes and Hitler obviously preferred aryans --- but there is obviously more to the story. "White nationalism" is clearly not merely a statement of preference. It is the belief and objective that white people should dominate society. Why? On what basis? Because Jesus was white (he wasn't)? "White nationalism" is not about superiority --- it is just a "preference" for oppressing others in order to achieve dominance. Thanks for the clarification/word play.
        • HKH2 3y ago
          >> Do you think they think they're better than you? That was not a rhetorical question. > Yes and Hitler obviously preferred aryans --- but there is obviously more to the story. True. There are different levels of racism. Some are enough to maintain an ethnicity, and others go way beyond that. > "White nationalism" is not about superiority --- it is just a "preference" for oppressing others in order to achieve dominance. Thanks for the clarification/word play. Are Chinese nationalists oppressive because they don't just open the borders? It's clear that you have a different standard for white people.
• klik99 3y ago
  For the overwhelming majority of cases, the difference is one is the motte and the other the bailey. Maybe there are some out there that are truly nationalists without feeling superior, but this has got to be very rare. If you didn't believe in supremacy (even just feeling culturally superior) why would you have a problem with people coming in? You'd only be a nationalist if you feel you'd lose something and end up in an inferior position.
  • NoRelToEmber 3y ago
    > If you didn't believe in supremacy (even just feeling culturally superior) why would you have a problem with people coming in? Because you value your kin and culture, and wish to preserve them. Or because you believe other people have in-group preference, which means your group will be worse off from increased competition. It's no different than a new pack of wolves moving into another pack's territory. From that point of view, the absence of self-superiority beliefs increases nationalism, since if the other group is equal or better, they are more competitively dangerous.
    • klik99 3y ago
      Great point, I completely disagree with this viewpoint but I can understand the POV. If you view the world as a zero sum game and that cultures meeting act like wolves fighting over territory, then you can hold a nationalist view without supremacy. Unfortunately this world view is the zeitgeist (manifesting across the political spectrum), and kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
      • NoRelToEmber 3y ago
        > If you view the world as a zero sum game and that cultures meeting act like wolves fighting over territory, then you can hold a nationalist view without supremacy. I don't think you need to see it as a zero sum game. Only that conflict, violent or otherwise, is likely, and often organized along ethnic lines. We could look at history to try to assess how true that is, but that would be a boring debate. I'm more interested in your opinion of my first point, which you skipped: what if you value your kin and culture? When it comes to biodiversity, other species, or even obscure tribes in the Andes, valuing their preservation is prevalent and uncontroversial [0]. Why not apply this same attitude to ourselves? Both will inevitably be diluted through immigration. Culture is of course not static, even absent immigration, so "preserving" it has limited effectiveness. But perhaps you wish to see how your culture will grow and evolve, without mixing it with a different culture? Especially since culture, just like genes, is largely continuous - to simplify, if there are two countries with distinct cultures, there is probably a third country half-way between them that already has a mix of their cultures. In this sense, by importing cultures, you're not creating a "new" culture, you're just reducing cultural differences. The same argument holds for genes, including the part about continuity [1]. It's popular to reduce this to skin color, but human genetic diversity covers far more. For example, all of the Big Five personality traits are hereditary [2], and likely so are other personality attributes that are harder to measure or define. Given how almost no variable human traits are evenly distributed among all groups, that means immigration quite literally changes the character of a country. Again, no invocation of "supremacy" is needed, just a desire for preservation. When this desire for preservation is directed externally, for example at Kashmir [3], it has no associated taboo. [0] At least in the present. We are all aware how different attitudes used to be, with explicit efforts to colonize and "civilize" others, or destroying old cultures and identities to replace them with the New Soviet Man and Year Zero. [1] Genes mirror geography within Europe - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2735096/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2735096/ [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/tp201596 https://www.nature.com/articles/tp201596 [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/08/08/kashmirs-new-status-could-bring-demographic-change-drawing-comparisons-west-bank/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/08/08/kashmirs-new...