Repost from the old site.
One of my finest commenters, James Schipper of Canada, has summed up the nature of the supremacism versus chauvinism debate. The issue in question has to do with whether or not White Nationalists are White Supremacists. James argues that most are not, because they have no desire to rule over what they see as lesser races.
He argues that we ought to junk the term White Supremacism in most cases and just substitute the term White Chauvinism. We can do this with all other ethnic nationalists too – Black Chauvinists, Arab Chauvinists, Chinese Chauvinists, etc. I think I will start doing just that.
James makes another interesting point that had never occurred to me. He points out that racial chauvinists are incapable of thinking in terms of gradations, continua and especially overlap. I see this constantly at American Renaissance.
There is an extreme reluctance there to regard any highly intelligent or high-achieving Black for what they are. Do they have a lot of nice degrees? Affirmative action! To they have a really nice, fancy, high-powered job that requires brains and fancy degrees? Affirmative action hire! Are they regarded as scholars? Intellectual lightweight!
As James notes, the mindset is that the best of yours is worse than the worst of ours.
James also hits on the head the mystery of what this ethnic chauvinism is all about. He points out that it is only a particularly ethnic form of the well-known phenomenon of human pride. This is why ethnic chauvinism looks similarly idiotic across the spectrum of ethnic groups and races.
You will notice this if you follow any of these movements. Greek and Turkish nationalists, Jewish and Arab nationalists, White and Black nationalists, all hate each other’s guts, but the truth is their basic personality styles and the nature of their discourse is strikingly similar.
James also solves the riddle of why ethnic chauvinists say such idiotic things: pride makes a man act like a complete fool and blinds him to reality, as the great sages have been telling us for millenia.
Robert, you are not exactly burdened with an inferiority complex. In fact, you consider yourself intellectually superior to the vast majority of other Americans. That doesn’t make you a supremacist because you do not claim the right to rule over your fellow Americans whom you consider your intellectual inferiors.
Similarly, White Nationalists (WN’s) who think that whites are intellectually superior to blacks are not necessarily White Supremacists, although some may be. Here I have to agree totally with Scott (see comments).
If I say that professors as a group are intellectually superior to dishwashers, then I’m by no means implying that professors should have more rights than dishwashers or that dishwashers should do the bidding of professors. Even if there were no races, then some people would still be superior to others.
No conclusion can be drawn from that without some ethical premises. Superiority of any kind is never a sufficient basis for domination. It all depends on one’s moral position. It is perfectly logical to believe at the same time that people are very unequal in ability and that they should be equal in rights.
Every supremacist may be a believer in the superiority of his group, but the converse is not true. Not every believer in the superiority of his own group is a supremacist. Instead of calling WN’s White Supremacists, you should call them White Chauvinists.
One vice of chauvinists is their frequent inability to think in terms of continua and overlap. They prefer dichotomies and intervals. Instead of saying that their group is only a few degrees superior to the next group and that many members of other groups are superior to members of their group, they prefer to see a vast interval between their own group and all other groups.
Their favorite motto is: The best of you is not as good as the worst of us.
We are dealing with the sin of pride here. Offensive though pride may be, it also has a ridiculous side because pride can blind a person and make him/her look foolish, which is what you often see at American Renaissance.
3
20
20
20
Robert
There’s quite a few so called WNist who adhere to theories claiming most or all ancient civilizations were White and that White Europids called Solutreans are the 1st Americans.
These kind of beliefs strike me as WSist.
Sure, all or most all WN’s are clearly White Supremacists. Screw that. Screw White nationalism. Screw White Supremacism. Screw ethnic nationalism. Screw ethnic supremacism.
I am not down with any of that. That is childlike, primitive behavior, Grown civilized adults really ought to be beyond that throwback stuff.
Farmers had profited immensely from slavery, and after slavery was abolished, laws were put in place to ensure that though African-Americans on the surface had freedom, it was made to establish their place beneath whites in society. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments officially gave African Americans citizenship rights, but most of these new rights were effectively denied by southern legislatures, federal courts, and presidential or congressional action until the civil rights revolution of the 1950s-1960s. Whites in the North and the South joined in solidarity on behalf of the white group interest in preserving systemic racism.