On the Rise of Ethnic-Nationalism

At the risk of sounding a little edgy, I want to write about something that’s concerning to me. As some of you may know, I like to try to stay ahead of the curve, and so I will occasionally frequent Internet blogs, groups and channels from people and organizations that are currently on the fringe, but show strong potential for going mainstream. Over the last few years, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend that is potentially dangerous for Christianity (and the world), but one that could be easily remedied by simply going back to a more traditional Christian perspective.

Since the end of World War I, and especially following World War II, there has been a strong international push toward globalization. The primary thrust in the 20th century was economic and political in nature. However, from the 1980s onward, we’ve seen this globalist push evolve from economics and politics, into culture and religion. Sadly, Catholics have played a pretty big role in this. There’s a tendency among Catholics to lean toward globalist ideals, namely because we have a global Church. Our mindset it geared to think of ONE faith, ONE Church, and ONE God. So it’s fairly easy for a large number of Catholics to start thinking of ONE world government too. But is this what our Catholic faith is really about?

Indeed, on a superficial level, there is nothing in Catholicism that opposes global government in and of itself, provided that such government at least protects, and ideally promotes, Christianity. Such idealism has never translated into practical application though. Only twice in world history has Christian imperialism ever been attempted. The first was under Caesar Constantine toward the end of antiquity. He split the Roman Empire in two just for manageability, and even then the Western half collapsed within just a couple centuries. The Eastern half would limp along for another thousand years, only to be conquered by the Muslims about the same time Columbus discovered America. In the West, a new attempt at reuniting Europe emerged under the Holy Roman Empire, which was a loose confederation of states united under Charlemagne in 800, that also lasted about a thousand years, before finally giving way to modern democracies and republics in the early 1800s. While none of these empires were “globalist,” in the modern sense of the word, they do represent a tendency among Catholics to unite Christian states into larger conglomerations. That, however, has always been the limitation of Christendom. Uniting Christian states requires a united Christian religion, and states that largely practice such a united religion. Without the former, you cannot have the latter. You cannot have imperial unity without some form of religious continuity. That was true for the ancient Pagans, and it was true for medieval Christians as well.

What emerged in the wake of the two world wars was not a rekindling of Christian imperialism, but rather something new. A secular form of imperialism was born, spawned in the secular United States and the remnants of the old British Empire. Germany tried its own version of semi-secular empire, first under the Kaiser, which ended in catastrophe, and second under Hitler, which did the same. Most people don’t realize that the Kaiser and Hitler were globalist (at least in ideal), but when you examine their political goals under a microscope, you can see they were both heading that way. Hitler tends to be the more obvious. Hitler, in particular, challenged the globalist ambitions of the United States and the Anglosphere, so he was put down rather quickly by the same. Russia too had its globalist ambitions under its socialist ideology. The Soviet Union was its attempt to gain global hegemony. Once again, that was put down by the American and British alliance via the Cold War. Now we have the re-emergence of a European empire, in the form of the EU, primarily led by Germany once again. It too will go down in flames — this time from within.

In the backdrop to all of this we have the United Nations, which is largely underwritten by the United States, and headquartered therein as well. The UN is truly the first, and most comprehensive, form of world government that humanity has ever known, and yes, the United States is both the money and the muscle behind it. Secular Globalism is the name of the game now, wherein religion is seen as unimportant and dare I say — unnecessary. People are allowed to be free to worship as they see fit, where such freedom is not prohibited by law (or Shariah), but overall, religion itself is seen as a secondary thing. What comes first at the UN, and among its globalist supporters around the world, is the idea that we all must be of one mind when it comes to social standards, and those standards aren’t always Christian. (The Green Agenda of “Global Warming” is an attempt to scare people into getting on the same globalist page.) In addition to that, cultures come in second place too. Culture, being derived from the way religion interacts with various peoples, is seen as a lesser thing. Thus ethnic, cultural and national identities once again take a back seat. What’s important is the globalist mindset, and that is defined by Secular Leftism or what is slowly becoming Cultural Marxism.

This is the world we were all born into. Those born before World War II might be able to remember a time when the United States wasn’t so globalist, but those born after World War II will not be able to remember such a time. Therein lies the problem. Secular Globalism is complete, universal and tyrannical, in the sense that it sees religion as unimportant (even obstructionist at times) and local cultures as a hindrance to the globalist agenda. First on the globalist chopping block is European culture, which has been overwhelmingly Christian for the last 2,000 years. This must be put down, and it’s done so not only by demoting the importance of Christianity in European culture, but also by shaming Europeans for everything that’s gone wrong in the world over the last five-hundred years. Ethnic Europeans (around the world, not just in Europe) are told to be ashamed of their race, their heritage, their culture, their religion, and their accomplishments. Ethnic Europeans (around the world, not just in Europe) are strongly encouraged to practice contraception, and limit their children to just one, or two at the most. Ethnic Europeans (around the world, not just in Europe) are told they must apologize for their existence, and if they fail to, they’re labelled as racists. Worst among the worst of ethnic Europeans are those who still dare to cling to their Christian faith, especially Catholics, who can only be excused if they openly (and publicly) betray the moral teachings of the Catholic Church. If they do so, they show allegiance to the new globalist order, and will be rewarded both financially and politically. Under the New World Order, the only good Catholic is a bad Catholic, meaning one who doesn’t practice or believe the faith, thus betraying it publicly. Those who uphold the faith will be shunned as “haters” and “dangerous,” even treated as such in politics and the media.

There can be no better example than what just recently happened to the Covington Catholic school boys following the 2019 March for Life in Washington DC. In what was clearly an act of national character assassination, young Catholic, Pro-Life, politically-conservative, and mostly ethnic European boys, were smeared all over the mainstream news as “racists” and “haters” all because they obeyed their chaperones, stayed where they were supposed to stand, while some Native American attention-seeker (with a criminal history) banged his drum in the face of these boys while cameras recorded it all. What the media failed to report (intentionally in some cases) was that these boys were verbally harassed by authentic racists — a group of ethnic Africans calling themselves “Black Hebrews.” This happened just before the Native American attention-seeker went after them with his drum. The media never once questioned the actions of the so-called “Black Hebrews” or the Native American with a criminal record. Instead, they went after ethnic European boys, who dared to cling to their Catholic Christian religion, show support for the Pro-Life cause, and express a moderately conservative support for President Trump. “How dare they!?!” The media exclaimed. “They must be put in their place. They must be made examples of. Even if it means ruining their young lives.”

This sort of treatment is nothing new. It’s been going on for decades actually. What made the whole thing explosive is that this time, this one time out of thousands, the national media got caught! There were enough cameras rolling to record the whole event. The truth came out on social media. The press was busted — “red handed” so to speak — as abusing their power to push an anti-European, anti-Catholic and anti-conservative agenda. For decades, Secular globalists have been using the “race card” to shame the greatest obstacle to their globalist agenda — European, Christian, conservatives. Anyone “too conservative,” or “too Christian,” or “too White” was labelled a racist and bigoted. Thus, they were relegated to the social periphery. The media overplayed their hand this time with the Covington controversy, and now they’ve been caught “red handed” in doing what they’ve done so well for decades.

So therein lies the problem of Secular globalism, but as you can imagine, such a problem would not exist in a vacuum. There is liable to be some form of push back. Among Christians the push back is predictable, albeit delayed for far too long. It’s not the Christian push back I’m concerned about, and you shouldn’t be concerned about it either. Christians are generally reasonable, law abiding, docile and perhaps a little too forgiving of wrongs committed against them. Only the most egregious cases, like Covington for example, end up being slugged out in the courts. Yet, there again proves the docility of Christians. They go to the courts, not the streets.

What concerns me is the non-Christian push back. You see, Secular globalists have controlled the narrative for over a century now, and since the end of World War II they’ve been shockingly successful. Their success has caused hundreds of millions of Christians in Europe and the Americas to abandon their Christian faith. The result has been the emergence of a largely Secular culture on all three continents, particularly Europe and North America.

As I’ve pointed out so many times in the past, and I’ll say it again here, there is no such thing as a religious vacuum. Nature abhors vacuums in physics, always seeking to fill them, and this is likewise true for religious vacuums when it comes to human nature. Secularism seeks to create a religious vacuum in society, and where it thinks to succeed, it only fails. Secularism drove Christianity out of Europe, following the First World War, but what immediately followed was a resurgence of folk Paganism and ethnic eugenics. While modern man is not so easily prone to return to the worship of the gods, he does see their mythology as a good framework for ethnic identity, while embracing the “science” of eugenics and ethnic-nationalism on an intellectual level. We saw this take shape overtly in Hitler’s Germany, before it was put down by force in the Second World War. Nevertheless, the specter of race politics has always played in the backdrop of the post-WWII era. Globalists played the game, and they played it well, using the reverse of Nazism, a sort of velvet totalitarianism, to keep ethnic Europeans “in their place” while they continued undermining the Christian religion and worldview. Ethnic Europeans were conditioned by public education and liberal universities to hate their historical accomplishments, and apologize for all the evils in the world. They were told to keep their families small, consider alternative forms of sexuality, focus on material wealth, and apologize to everyone for being: too Catholic, too Christian, too conservative and too White. For those who already abandoned their Christianity, this was no problem, except when it came to the too-conservative and too-White part.

Secular globalists couldn’t keep the game going on forever. Eventually there would be push-back. The Christian push-back is generally pretty tame, limiting itself to legal means using the court system, radio and the Internet. The Secular nationalist push-back is more aggressive, and it’s growing. In addition to legal means, radio, the Internet, there are also demonstrations, political backlash, racial tensions, riots, a return to neo-Paganism, and even the rise of real and authentic racism. I’m not talking about the old Jim Crow Klansman type. I’m talking about the full-blown racial eugenics of ethnic-nationalism. This is the stuff of fascism and neo-Nazis. We’re seeing it rise to the surface in Europe right now, with political movements such as Golden Dawn in Greece and the Nordic Resistance Movement in Scandinavia, just to name two examples. The growing popularity of such parties is spawned, mostly, by the globalist agenda of allowing mass-migration of Muslims from North Africa and the Middle East into Europe. This has led many ethnic Europeans, rightly, to view such globalist moves as a form of demographic genocide. For generations, ethnic Europeans have been told to limit their family size, and they’ve been economically rewarded for doing so. Now, after generations of compliance with the contraceptive diktat, rather than getting the European utopia they were promised, they are instead finding themselves “replaced” by ethnic Arabs and North Africans, who brought with them their Muslim religion, Islamic culture, and third-world problems! I cannot condone the racist mindset of emerging nationalist parties in Europe, at the same time, however, I cannot blame Europeans for turning to it. It’s a simple “cause and effect” sort of thing. When you do what globalists have done to ethnic Europeans for decades, can we really be surprised when there is an ethnic-nationalist push-back? Doesn’t it logically stand to reason that this is exactly what would happen, especially in the absence of Christianity?

What we see now in Europe is coming to North America, and as much as Secular globalists (political Leftists) want to blame President Donald Trump for this, his attempt to build a border wall between the United States and Mexico is actually an effort to prevent this sort of ethnic-nationalism from developing in the US. “Good fences make good neighbors” as the saying goes, and what Trump is trying to do is stop the flood of Latin American migrants from overwhelming American infrastructure and cultural melting-pot. If he fails, today’s Europe is America’s tomorrow. Ethnic-nationalism will become a mainstream American political position. That’s something the US cannot afford, because America has always relied on some level of racial plurality. The nation itself is far too diverse to survive the rise of ethnic-nationalism as a mainstream political position. It will literally tear the country apart. Trump knows it, and that’s why he’s trying to build a wall. It’s not because he’s a racist. It’s quite the opposite really. He’s trying to prevent racism from taking root in mainstream American politics. There is nothing wrong with Latin Americans entering the US legally, and in a regulated fashion, so they have time to assimilate into American culture. That has always been the American recipe for success. The American model is one of civic-nationalism, as opposed to ethnic-nationalism. But even in America’s civic-nationalism, modeled after Britain’s civic-nationalism, there is a slight nod to an ethnic element, in the form of mandating a common language and legal system, usually based on the dominant ethnic-culture. In the case of America’s ethnic-culture, that has always been England, from which the original thirteen colonies broke away from in 1765-1783.

In spite of subsequent racial tensions, and America has had plenty, the ethnic “melting-pot” model, of American civic-nationalism, worked because new waves of immigrants were given time to “melt” into American culture. This was done by controlling immigration numbers like a valve, closing it to a trickle for decades, in-between periods when it was briefly opened for a flood. The American melting-pot success story has always been dependent on giving immigrants time to assimilate into the greater Anglo-American culture, before the nation is again inundated with the next wave of immigrants. German-Americans, Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans came to America to become Americans. They came as immigrants not colonist. When they arrived, they immediately found themselves surrounded by a culture that demanded they learn English and understand both American society and the government it created. Those who couldn’t assimilate failed to gain citizenship, and if they continued to fail, they were eventually sent back to their country of origin. This may sound cruel, but it was necessary, and the system has worked for over 200 years. It also created a powerful incentive for immigrants to assimilate, and they almost always did. America now enjoys the benefits of Irish, German and Italian culture, but all of these people speak English fluently. They all know what it means to be American and what is expected of them as Americans.

If Trump is successful at building the wall, and getting a handle on Latin American immigration, it still doesn’t solve the problem of emerging ethnic-nationalism on this continent. It simply gives America time, a little breathing room, to try to address the problem at a deeper level before we lose control. This is because the problem is primarily ideological in nature. It’s globalism versus nationalism, and both of those ideologies have a life of their own. They cannot be stopped. It’s like the case of the unstoppable force meets the immovable object. The result can only be destruction. Nevertheless, the force is “unstoppable,” just as the object is “unmovable.” You can’t move nationalism, no matter how much your try, and Lord knows the globalists have tried very hard. Likewise, you can’t stop globalism, no matter how hard you try, because the world is growing closer together every year, and nations are becoming increasingly interdependent on each other. Both of these forces are invincible because they’re both manifestations of our human nature. Attempting to eliminate one or the other is to deny our very humanity. So long as there are human beings walking the earth, there will always be currents of globalism and nationalism. It’s as normal as the sunrise. So if that’s the case, how do we keep these forces from clashing too violently?

I think the solution is a return to the traditional position of Christianity, and the traditional position of the Catholic Church in particular. While the Catholic Church traditionally gave its blessing on imperial Christian monarchies, which spanned multiple nations, cultures and ethnicities, at the same time it recognized the value and integrity of each one of those nations, cultures and ethnicities. I discussed this thoroughly in my essays on inculturation (here, here and here). The Catholic Church, historically speaking, has always insisted that indigenous cultures are valuable, and the Church has made every effort to preserve them by baptizing them within the context of Christianity. This is especially the case with European cultures, as well as Middle Eastern cultures, and Latin American cultures. Entire rites and jurisdictions have been created within the Catholic Church for this reason, and even in most recent times, the Catholic Church has affirmed that every ethnic population has a right to a homeland. The tendency of Catholics to lean toward imperial governments in the past, and global governance in the present, is only misguided insofar as it subscribes to uniformity. What made Christian imperial governments work in the past was a willingness to preserve and protect the distinctiveness of indigenous ethnicities and cultures. Likewise, if global compacts and accords can ever hope to work in the future, the globalists are going to have to give in to the idea that indigenous people (even the indigenous people of Europe) have valuable ethnicities and cultures, that deserve to be preserved and protected. It’s debatable if this is even possible under Secularism, since Secularism sees religion as unimportant, it tends to focus more on race, and that’s a woefully ineffective way of addressing the problem. Historically, Christianity saw the conversion of indigenous people, and upon their conversion in large numbers, various rites were created, with autonomous jurisdictions to accompany them. The Catholic Church moved away from this practice following the Council of Trent (1545 – 1563), and has only recently, and tepidly, reintroduced the practice in 1980 with the incorporation of the English Patrimony for English-speaking converts to the Catholic faith. A real plunge back into this practice would be an full-fledged English Rite, but for the time being that is not possible. It could perhaps be reconsidered at some future date, but only time will tell. Still the move to preserve the English Patrimony within the Catholic Church is pretty bold in and of itself, and does represent a dramatic shift away from the post-Tridentine practice, even though the Council of Trent nowhere forbade it in the first place. The tendency of the post-Tridentine era (the era following the Council of Trent) was uniformity within the Western Catholic Church. The trauma of the Protestant Reformation is what brought this uniformity about, but it’s probably safe to say that such uniformity in faith may have been in part to blame for the uniformity mindset that accepts uniformity in government as well. Thus we have the Catholic embrace of globalism, which must be moved away from if the West is to survive, and if the Catholic Church wishes to retain credibility in an emerging post-globalist world.

Globalism, in the form of imperialism, led to the First World War. Globalism, in the form of fascism led to the Second World War. Globalism in the form of Marxism led to the Cold War. Now we have globalism in the form of militant Secularism that is leading us toward a Third World War, which will inevitably be more of a riotous event, tearing the West apart from within. To survive, the Secular globalist push must be abandoned, but as I said above, nature abhors a vacuum, and if Secular globalism is to be abandoned, it must be replaced with something else.

I believe the solution is Christian Internationalism, or a New Christendom.

By Christian Internationalism (or New Christendom) I mean the ideal of charitable cooperation between different nations, but at the same time giving recognition that each region is entitled to it’s own ethnic identity, cultural heritage and in some cases, national sovereignty. Likewise, each nation is entitled to the right to regulate migration for the purpose of protecting its infrastructure, language and cultural heritage. Christian Internationalism (New Christendom) is built on charity, wherein each nation recognizes the humanity in another, and seeks to assist others within its limited means. Pivotal to the success of Christian Internationalism (New Christendom) is the age-old prospect of Christian evangelism. This is the job of the Church, not the state, wherein disciples of Christ are made in all places, wherever they can be, and the role of international governments is simply to insure that Christians have equal access to all countries, with the ability to speak freely therein.

The Catholic Church, in particular, has the role of inculturation, to insure that when an indigenous population is baptized, its culture is not lost. The culture itself must be baptized, and brought into permanent preservation within the Church. This can be done minimally though incorporating indigenous music, dance, dress and art into the Church, as much as possible, but more significantly by creating various jurisdictions and rites to accommodate the specific liturgical and pastoral needs of these cultures. For example; in addition to the creation of a full English Rite within the Catholic Church, and maybe even a Germanic/Nordic Rite if ever desired, I would advocate for the creation of Native American rites as well — where applicable — and maybe even some African rites. Granted, such rites might not always be needed, or wanted, but whenever there is a need or a desire, Rome should be quick to accommodate for the the sake of inculturation. In doing so, Rome would be balancing the tension between globalism and nationalism, in such a way that could prevent ethnic conflict.

This would also get international focus off the “superstition of race” as Pope Pius XI warned against in his 1937 German encyclical Mit brennender Sorge. Certainly, just as every culture has a right to exist, so does every ethnicity (yes, even European ethnicities). The Catholic Church affirms this, so long as Christian charity is the primary relation between cultures and ethnicities. The increased longing, over the last hundred years, for ethnic Europeans (i.e. “Whites” in America) to rediscover their ethnic identity and culture is a legitimate one. It’s just as legitimate as ethnic Africans (“Blacks” in America) who have experienced an increasing desire to rediscover their own ethnic identity and culture over the last fifty years. By all means, the desire is healthy, sane and normal! People should be encouraged to do it, whenever the desire hits them. The Catholic Church can play a role in this, and indeed it should, as it is a necessary part at preserving and protecting the influence of Christianity on these cultures, just as it is preserving and protecting the cultures themselves. It’s part of the overall “maintenance” of evangelized territories, and very much Rome’s historical function to recognize, facilitate and encourage. Recognizing liturgical rites, and creating jurisdictions that preserve them, allows each culture to flourish on its own, asserting its own particular uniqueness and identity. It balances the tension between globalism and nationalism. It softens their impact when these two forces inevitably collide.

The Church’s failure to fulfill this role, in conjunction with the influence of Secular globalism over the West, has led to a number of very big complications. Chief among these complications is the ease in which ethnic Europeans have left the faith. There is no cultural or ethnic connection to the Christian religion anymore, and because of this, weak Christians (especially in Protestant countries) abandon the faith much more easily. Another complication is the emergence of Neo-Paganism, Wicca and Neo-Heathenism, which continue to grow and spread their influence throughout the West. Yet another complication is the phenomenon of Western Orthodoxy, wherein Eastern Orthodox churches have attempted to fill the void, left by Rome, by creating various rites to accommodate ethnic-European cultures. Finally, the most difficult complication is the growing propagation of Islam in the West, adopted by some ethnic-Europeans whom globalists have so successfully divorced from their own European culture that they’re willing to adopt Arab-Muslim religion ad culture to fill the vacuum. Islam makes no attempt at inculturation. It simply steamrolls over local cultures with it’s own Middle Eastern culture that comes with it. In the end, Secularism’s greatest, and most lasting, legacy will be the surrender of Europe to Islam.

Ethnic-nationalism is not a disease. It’s a symptom of a much bigger problem, and that problem has at its root the abandonment of Christianity in the West, followed by a relentless and tyrannical advance of Secular globalism, that tramples over the rights of nations, peoples, ethnicities, cultures and religions. This abandonment of Christianity causes people to focus unnaturally on race and genetics as a kind of pseudo-religion, or superstition, while reverting back to Pagan folklore in the hope of hanging on to at least a trace of cultural identity. Every attempt to put down ethnic-nationalism has failed. Not even the great World War II could suppress it permanently. It’s back! And it’s growing with a vengeance. Another World War might suppress it for another 50 years, but at what cost!?! It will only return again, and again, and again. It’s never going away until the root cause is addressed, and only Christianity (particularly the Catholic Church) has the means to address it. Those means can be found in its history, and the way it handled ethnic tensions in the past. To address the problem of ethnic nationalism, there needs to be a reciprocation, and Rome has already (perhaps unwittingly) taken the first step with the re-adoption of the English Patrimony into the bosom of the Church. Rome needs to re-embrace the cultures of Europe as much as it is liturgically and pastorally possible. She also needs to extend this to the cultures of Latin America, Africa and Asia. Then the people of the West need to reciprocate by re-embracing Christianity not only as revealed divine truth, but also as an acknowledgement of their very cultural and ethnic identity, meaning who they are as a people.

Shane Schaetzel is an author of Catholic books and an Evangelical convert to the Catholic Church through Anglicanism. His articles have been featured on LifeSiteNews, The Remnant Newspaper, Forward in Christ, and Catholic Online. You can read Shane’s books at ShaneSchaetzel.Com