Alexander Raynor reviews Identity: The Foundation of the City as Henri Levavasseur’s powerful argument that the survival of Western civilization depends on rekindling the ancestral unity of ethnos and polis.
It is a tragedy that any sort of defense of nationalism on ethnic grounds is immediately labelled as Nazism or racism. It is stultifying intellectual discourse.
As C.S. Lewis said, quoting the Greeks, “No man loves his city because it is great, but because it is his.” The love of nation is an extension of love of family. It is part of who we are and part of what gives meaning to our lives.
Only now are we seeing more developed and nuanced approaches to the idea of an ethnic reclamation of modern politics, and a glimpse of this book seems to offer a proposal for such an approach. We must be mindful of simple nationalism cast in liberal vein, and instead reach for the deeper roots, which, like the author, are being sought-after to renew an identity that gives people a social dimension to their being, beyond platitudes of the modern nation state.
I can sense that where we are burdened by liberal sociolinguistic constructs, more and more authors are seeking to break through that. An interesting read to keep an eye out.
While i like the arguments presented, i wonder how they would stand up in a (hypothetical) context where humanity on planet Earth is one of many spacefaring civilizations in the universe or more bleakly a context in which a single large meteorite could extinguish us in a year (as likely nearly happened around 12000 years ago).
There is something to be said for recognizing that we are all the same species and that we have more in common than we like to admit with all the other lifeforms on this planet. And that we should be working toward global unity of purpose rather than balkanizing or becoming parochial villages.
I am all for remembering and preserving languages and cultures and traditions, and also for the right of a people to determine their own destiny. However i think the arguments in the essay gloss over the elite economic interests and players that have always used ethnic and racial and national divisions for their own gain (ie divide and rule), at the expense of improvements in quality of life for most of the population.
It is a tragedy that any sort of defense of nationalism on ethnic grounds is immediately labelled as Nazism or racism. It is stultifying intellectual discourse.
As C.S. Lewis said, quoting the Greeks, “No man loves his city because it is great, but because it is his.” The love of nation is an extension of love of family. It is part of who we are and part of what gives meaning to our lives.
I have ordered the book.
Lol, isn’t Arktos run by a fucking Jew?
Who are you talking about? Friberg is Swedish.
Only now are we seeing more developed and nuanced approaches to the idea of an ethnic reclamation of modern politics, and a glimpse of this book seems to offer a proposal for such an approach. We must be mindful of simple nationalism cast in liberal vein, and instead reach for the deeper roots, which, like the author, are being sought-after to renew an identity that gives people a social dimension to their being, beyond platitudes of the modern nation state.
I can sense that where we are burdened by liberal sociolinguistic constructs, more and more authors are seeking to break through that. An interesting read to keep an eye out.
Are there any leaders who have the guts to stand up??
While i like the arguments presented, i wonder how they would stand up in a (hypothetical) context where humanity on planet Earth is one of many spacefaring civilizations in the universe or more bleakly a context in which a single large meteorite could extinguish us in a year (as likely nearly happened around 12000 years ago).
There is something to be said for recognizing that we are all the same species and that we have more in common than we like to admit with all the other lifeforms on this planet. And that we should be working toward global unity of purpose rather than balkanizing or becoming parochial villages.
I am all for remembering and preserving languages and cultures and traditions, and also for the right of a people to determine their own destiny. However i think the arguments in the essay gloss over the elite economic interests and players that have always used ethnic and racial and national divisions for their own gain (ie divide and rule), at the expense of improvements in quality of life for most of the population.