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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". I don't think this

>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
[deleted]
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.

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

[dead]

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

[deleted]

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.