There is a debate raging across circles which have declared opposition to globalism. The debate breaks down as follows: civic nationalism or ethnic nationalism? These categories together are opposed to liberalism or multicultural progressive ideology. But Canada stems from an imperial tradition. Neither liberal nor nationalist, at least in the sense meant by these two factions. It is something else and has a history preceding these siblings of the Enlightenment. We will see what this tradition has to offer us.
Civic nationalists believe that ethnic and cultural differences are not barriers to a united country. They emphasize the relationship between the individual and a national culture, which is protected by the national state. Generally, civic nationalists see citizens as sharing in a more-or-less single and unified culture which is not concerned with racial background. Examples of countries in which this tradition exists include the modern United States and France.
Ethnic nationalists do not accept that one can jettison the racial question. To them common ancestry is a necessary condition of a unified culture. The science of human biodiversity is usually referenced; if populations differ, then they must necessarily develop different cultures. Ethnic nationalists also point to the fact that multiethnic civic nationalist states often develop ethnic tensions anyway. This is especially true today, when political opportunists use anti-oppression ideology to create a “coalition of minorities” against a perceived hegemonic majority. Their answer is that nationalism must be ethnic in nature. Israel, the early US, and the modern DPRK all had or have ethnonationalist components to their ideology.
How to think about this? The first thing we should recall is that both of these ideas are relatively new. The roots of modern ideological nationalism are tied in with the French Revolution, and begin to reach maturity in the 19th century. There is an irony to this, because many on both sides consider themselves in some sense traditionalists. But in fact, both of these nationalist ideas are firmly rooted in the Enlightenment era and were once on the radical and revolutionary wing of the political spectrum. Nationalist ideology was born across the West out of a desire to overthrow the Christian monarchies and their regimes, which were often imperial in nature. There is a long and established anti-Christian tendency to many of these movements. Nationalist projects from the Jacobin cultural homogenization in France to the Italian Risorgimento consistently persecuted clergy and faithful. Modern nationalists of both stripes – especially if they claim to be traditionalists – must confront this aspect of their heritage.
Modern ethnonationalism stems from the observation that multiethnic states have become increasingly unstable. This observation – in and of itself – is correct. Diverse states have many more lines of fracture which can occur when times become hard. In democracies, diversity grants manifold opportunities for political lobbying and perceived threats to one’s own group by another. But a huge number of multiethnic states have existed in history; it is specifically the liberal-democratic multiethnic state which is a new phenomenon. What we see historically is that multiethnic states possess a particular ethnoculture which is foundational to the state. In addition, such states generally limit the opportunities for ethnic politics. Singapore and China accomplish this by recognizing Han norms (or “Asian values” in Singapore’s case) as foundational to the social order. Other cultural expressions maintain spaces which are designed to govern themselves while preserving a relationship with that foundation. For example, China’s Hui Muslims have generally experienced greater religious liberty than their coreligionists in Xinjiang. This is because they are seen as having a better relationship with the Chinese state and as having stronger ties with the dominant culture. Similar social orders existed under regimes like the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the western and eastern Roman Empire, and others.
Civic nationalists generally observe that there are actually quite a number of multiethnic societies which seem to function just fine. After all, America remains a rich and powerful country despite demographic changes over the years, even with political polarization. Civic nationalists conclude that the country was more unified because everyone was expected to integrate into the Anglo-American culture with shared social and political values. But civic nationalism has a flaw. This system seems to work fine so long as the defining ethnoculture maintains a strong majority. But when the dominant culture loses its once-uncontested position, then integration becomes ineffective. This implies that populations aren’t just interchangeable. The other problem is that human beings seem to naturally desire ties with their ancestors and a sense of belonging. The civic nationalist demands that humans just jettison this to integrate into a mass, homogeneous, and increasingly rootless national culture. Examples are the American civic nationalism of capitalism and the Constitution, and the French civic nationalism of language, secularism, and 1789. Across the world, we have seen young people from well-off families join movements from Islamist groups to rightist and leftist organizations in a search for meaning.
We can conclude that both groups make some accurate observations about the world. However, they also make certain errors. And as we saw, both are extremely recent ideologies on the world stage. So what exactly is the historical norm for large human societies?
All societies we think of as “great civilizations” begin as much smaller entities, at the mercy of the great powers of their own day. But as time goes on, they are able to project growing economic, military, political, and cultural power. This is a dynamic process, but not a consistent one. A new invention, alliance, religion, or military victory can massively expand a society’s sphere of influence. But a factor which is more consistent is that the expansion of a society depends on that society’s governing elites. They must make correct decisions, exercise sound judgement, maintain their skill in politics and war, and have the confidence to expand their influence. At some point, their position as a great power in the world causes an elite to develop norms of governance, symbolism, and historical narrative. Collectively, this creates a vision of what their polity’s position should be and how it should be ruled. We might say that the elite forms an imperial idea.
When an idea like this is strong enough, it can be passed down through many cycles of civilization. China is a good example again, with the Communist Party elites invoking a sense of civilizational unity with previous eras of history. Similarly, when what is now France began to expand regionally, its leaders invoked the idea of Christian Rome. This imperial idea serves two functions. First, it forms the values and goals of those actually governing, who become its direct agents. But in addition, it can also become a point of unity among different populations which come under the same polity. Structurally, local and imperial elites often cooperate in maintaining common economic access, defensive apparatus, and systems of infrastructure.
It often happens that some number of these populations – sometimes local elites, sometimes entire cultures – will begin to adopt that ethos for themselves. Of course, the idea that every person and population has the exact same relationship with the central power is itself a newer one – even in Western history. In the Roman empire, the Gallic regions became more Latinized, while the Greeks maintained their own Hellenic culture. The Holy Roman Emperor possessed a number of different titles in various parts of Europe, as did Napoleon during his own rule. Under the British Empire, the ethnically and culturally Anglo-Protestant regions co-existed with territories like French Canada and the British Raj. The former maintained its religion and language (to the chagrin of people like the American founders) while the latter maintained relations with vassal rulers. Russia is a good example of asymmetric federalism in the modern day, both in its domestic territories and among countries making up the Eurasian Economic Union today and USSR in former times.
What is to be learned? Here, a statement of values is necessary. Northern Dawn is a project of Restoration. By Restoration, we mean that Western societies and especially their rulers must embrace the ways of thinking and governing which create great civilizations. Our interests are those forces which increase the wisdom, endurance, achievements, and dynamism of the social order. In addition to this positive vision, there is also a fact of political life to consider. Despite the nominally triple-digit numbers of sovereign states in the world, it is of course a few states which truly exercise sovereignty in their internal and external politics. Most others fall into one or another state’s sphere. What we call the Western world must be sovereign – accountable to a Western geopolitical pole. The American superpower, despite all its ideological and cultural chaos, still maintains this on a simple level of economic and military might. During the Roman collapse, entire regions of the world in the Near East and North Africa passed from Christian into Islamic hands. They have never been regained. With Erdogan’s eye on Europe and Chinese ascendency, the shaping of the post-liberal West must retain our sovereignty in relation to rival geopolitical poles. Canada cannot do this on its own, nor can most of our European or Anglosphere cousins.
This means that we require a governing elite which thinks on the level of great spaces. It must have an imperial idea. Canada is uniquely placed in this intellectual dialectic. Continental European traditions are alien to the Anglo-American culture. Much of the Anglosphere, including Britain, frames immigration in terms of colonial debts instead of social interests. Canada has two unique perspectives: it shares a large degree of Anglo-American culture, but it has also inherited a view of culture which is neither individualistic nor nationalist in the modern sense. The multicultural policy has been hijacked toward ideologically dangerous ends. However, we should remember that it was a revision (a drastic one) of the policies through which English and French Canadians maintained their heritage compared to their American cousins, despite the dominance of the former group. It is a ghost, though weak and somewhat feeble, of the British project of Empire.
That energy was expressed in neither ethnic nor civic nationalism, but also not in atomizing liberalism. This dichotomy exists only due to our cultural amnesia. The pursuit to expand the British civilization and the Christian religion did not contradict the eventual governing of territories where the British people were not the only group, nor even the majority. It did not even preclude vassal states ruled by non-Christian and non-British princes. What it did was make that society and its institutions the point of unity, embodied in the Crown. The imperial mindset allowed the British people to not only maintain their culture in the North Atlantic, but make it a great power in the world. The descendants of this people now populate multiple continents. Countries which eventually cast Britain out politically learned from its institutions, from Singapore to Kenya to India. The same grand historical arc has played out in civilizations from Rome, to China, to the Ottomans, to Russia. And what of us? Remnant cultural pockets or vassaldom to a rival is not an acceptable outcome. The same energy is demanded from those who can rebuild the broken structures which the liberal world order has left us.