Patriots, Identitarians, Nationalists and Sovereignists: They must all be positive
What follows is the text of my speech given at the Generation Identity conference in London, UK, July 27, 2019.
Words such as “sovereignty” and “identity,” both belonging to the family of patriotism, have become trendy words among European nationalists of different stripes. They are even used as synonyms along with their new derivatives “sovereignists” and “identitarians” respectively. Many of these verbal derivatives did not even exist in the English language until recently. In the German language these words, which are of Latin origin, have also come into use recently—words such as der Patriot, der Identitäre and der Souveränist, although they often sound odd and un-German to traditional German ears. These replacement words for the old word “nationalist” owe their birth to two political and historical factors: 1) The German language, shortly after World War II, was subjected to a profound cleansing process carried out by the occupying Allied forces and their re-educational apparatchiks, the latter mostly recruited among academics of the newly re-established, Jewish-dominated Marxist Frankfurt school. Their task was to impose on the German people a new political vocabulary, a new way of communication — and a new identity. 2) The old German words associated with the notion of patriotism such as the German adjective “völkisch” or the compound noun “Volksgenosse,” which stands for a fellow patriot, or the unique German word “artfremd,” which means an alien of different biological stock, or the word “gleichrassig,” meaning someone of the same racial stock, vanished overnight in 1945. Ever since they have become crimethink words banned from public discourse. Henceforth many modern German and other European nationalists, burdened by the stigma of the National-Socialist past, prefer to use imported words such as “patriots” or “identitarians” instead, well aware that these new words can provide them with a modicum of political legitimacy in the mainstream media.
The new word “identitiarian” sounds quite romantic and is often used by patriots today all over Europe and America although it is not specific enough. Our identity cannot be unitary; it can have multiple facets. How should we define our identity? In singular or in plural? For example, in my case, which identity comes first and which one comes second? Am I first a Croat or an American? Or a hyphenated Croat-American? Or a European-White-American? On the professional level I can also display triple or quadruple identities; I can first define myself as a writer, as a professor, a translator, or as a political activist. On the religious level, my identity may first be Catholic or agnostic. And finally, there is also my racial identity, which is being dismissed as a social construct today by the majority of System-friendly scholars and the mainstream media. There are, fortunately, a few prominent scholars today who consider race the first marker of man’s identity. Even a half-blind man when stepping out of this London hotel can notice swarms of individuals of different races milling around.
So which identity should I pick first in my case? Should it be based on my racial, national, political, religious, sexual, or professional preferences? Read more