Free Republic

At first glance, the new nationalism of conservatives will seem benign and even uncontroversial. In his book “The Case for Nationalism,” Rich Lowry defines nationalism as flowing from a people’s “natural devotion to their home and to their country.” Yoram Hazony, in his book “The Virtue of Nationalism,” also has a rather anodyne definition of nationalism. It means “that the world is governed best when nations agree to cultivate their own traditions, free from interference by other nations.” There is nothing particularly controversial at all about these statements. Defined in these terms, it sounds like little more than simply defending...

In 2003, the anthropologist Duana Fullwiley spent six months observing a team of biomedical research scientists. The team wanted to find out whether genetic variation could affect how different people respond to drugs, and to do so, they recruited a group of racially and ethnically diverse research subjects. They were a diverse team themselves, with good intentions to address a worthy problem—it’s well known that different races suffer from health problems at different rates and can respond differently to treatments. If they could trace these discrepancies to genetic differences between races, the team reasoned, they could explain, and perhaps start...

According to a recent article in Vox, conservatives who denounce government overreach aren’t really concerned about burdensome regulations. No—it turns out the “language of small government” is really just “a handmaiden to ethno-nationalism.” Proof? The author, David Roberts, points to a 2016 New York Times story that depicted a few white men in rural America venting their anger over regulations against “coal rolling”—the practice of modifying diesel truck engines to spew thick black smoke. Apparently, being a blue-collar white man who likes spewing black smoke into the air makes you a white nationalist. And apparently, spewing black smoke into the...

Even the left-wing Mother Jones article in which Bannon was quoted explicitly noted that “exactly who and what defines the alt-right is hotly debated in conservative circles.” The piece also emphasized that Bannon “describes its ideology as ‘nationalist.'” In other words, Bannon’s “alt-right” comment indicates he apparently thought it consisted mainly of computer gamers and blue-collar voters who hated the GOP brand associated with George W. Bush’s brand of “conservatism” or “Bushism” that sought nation-building adventures abroad while allowing crony capitalism to fester in D.C. And as he explained to the Wall Street Journal in 2016, Bannon explicitly rejected and...

When the question of ethnonationalism comes up, many are often tempted to say that the United States cannot have a “genuine” type of it because of the somewhat “artificial” nature of the USA, planted as colonies and then filled with immigrants which were (originally) from NW Europe, then the rest of Europe, prior to 1965. The Germans could have German nationalism, the Italians could have Italian nationalism, and so forth, but Americans can’t have a genuine ethnonationalism of their own. I believe this argument rests on the false premise that race – and only race – determines nationality, which is...