Ethnarchism

Nationalism without a Nation-State

Nationalism is an abstract ideology, an -ism, a universal, metapolitical orientation. It is not a political platform or program. Nationalism merely entails thinking and behaving in the interest of one’s ethnic nation and respecting other ethnic nations pursuing the same.

Nationalism is not National Chauvinism. Chauvinism is the abstract ideology that entails thinking and behaving in the interest of one’s own group with indifference or hostility to other groups. In the case of National Chauvinism, this would be White Americans perceiving Americans who aren’t White as the enemy to be defeated, rather than as distinct and unique ethnicities to be bargained with, allied with, and (if necessary) competed with as rivals.

When most people think of the term “nationalism,” they think of a specific political construct, namely “Westphalian Nationalism.” Ethnic nationalities have, in some sense, been around as long as humans have been around, but the nation-state as we know it today was conjured up by bureaucrats in 1648. The presumption that the nationalist ideology is synonymous with Westphalian Nationalism and subsequent Romantic Nationalism movements, is an obstacle to thinking clearly about our national interest as White Americans.

I am not dismissive of Westphalian Nationalism or Romantic Nationalism. In fact, they’re perhaps viable in the remaining states that have remained supermajority ethnostates like Ireland or Hungary. I’ll only name America here to avoid arguments with foreigners over whether they can realistically reclaim their state, but there’s more than one. White Americans are not in a position to revert the United States back into a White American nation-state.

A new label is necessary, one that’s not loaded with the Westphalian/Romantic priors. Fortunately, the perfect word already exists and it’s much older than the English language itself: ethnarchy. Ethnarchism is, as the etymology suggests, rule by the ethnos. And when there’s a specific ethnarch, that’s the leader of the ethnic group in question. This is the framework the Jews depended on during their submission to the Roman Empire, as well as the framework the Greeks depended upon during their submission to the Byzantine Empire.

Ethnarchism steps right over the needling about how we would supposedly deport tens of millions of non-Whites, or how we would instigate a bloody civil war to achieve full Westphalian sovereignty over a chunk of the American Empire. Not to be a pessimist, but if China isn’t even permitted by the United States to wrestle control of parts of China from the American Empire, the prospects probably aren’t great for us.

Ethnarchism implies being in but not of a multi-ethnic, multi-racial state, and not in conflict with it. Ethnarchism is Orania. It’s also the parallel institutions and insular communities that already exist for several religious and ethnic communities already. Ethnarchism is about coming to terms with our demographic and political situation and moving forward as what we are now rather than what we would wish to be: a stateless minority within a global empire that is quite explicit about not being a vehicle for our ethnic interests as White Americans.

While people who are racially White remain a thin majority of Americans, belonging to an ethnicity requires a degree of identification. When you dig into the numbers with an eye towards the future, considering how many young White people have non-White family members, cosmopolitan loyalties, and globalist ideologies, we can stop pretending we’re a majority. While we have an interesting backstory, we’re just one ethnicity in a bazaar of ethnicities here, none of whom will decisively control the state.

As thrilling as it is to fantasize about actively resisting the federal government, it’s the stuff of fantasy. Perhaps you envision a future turn of events where that prospect isn’t fantastical. I’m agnostic about that, and do not believe it’s healthy or wise for our cause to sit around and patiently wait for fantastical conditions. It’s even less healthy and wise to try to force those conditions.

We can and should be building parallel communities now.

There’s actually already much of that going on, some public and formal and some less so. Some of it looks more like a commune, a cult, or even a compound. But it’s not necessary to rigidly define the process. Gradually developing homeschooling cooperatives, relocating to the same city or neighborhood (not necessarily the same plot of land), and attending common places of worship aligned with one’s values and identity, are all neotribal ethnarchist initiatives that make progress towards preserving, protecting, and perpetuating our White identity.

Whether the world is organized under a single hyperpower, controlled by a small set of orwellian superstates, or power is devolved and scattered in a patchwork of happy homelands is less about ideology than it is about the state of military, economic, and political technology. Our cause has little control over that geopolitical process, and should think and behave in a manner where we’ll thrive no matter how the nature of power and sovereignty might evolve and adapt in the future.

The Greeks were eventually able to realize their nation-state ambitions, but only after investing in their identity for centuries within the context of an implicitly hostile Ottoman Empire. Had they insisted on a premature and impractical resistance to the Ottoman Empire, the Greek identity may well have not survived into the modern age.

Importantly, ethnarchism isn’t an alternative to engaging the national and global culture war. In fact, it complements it, since the farcical notion that we’re engaging politics to achieve political dominance is a source of frustration, confusion, and ridicule for White Identitarians. Liberated from the fool’s errand of trying to turn the GOP into the “White People’s Party” or whatever, we can think and behave like other ethnic blocs behave, agitating and organizing for our interests and ideas in the framework of machine politics rather than mass politics.