Tag Archives: Nationalism

Abendland: A Post-Nationalist Vision of Europe

03 Saturday Aug 2019

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The “Abendlanders” proposed the creation of a unified Europe, but they imagined it as an organic unity based on its shared Christian heritage, an association of “fatherlands”, reminiscent of the social order willed by God that was destroyed by the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the emergence of nation-states, and the nationalism that had resulted in the First World War. Their Europe was not merely a political and economic association but rather an ordered society giving way to “eine neue Lebensform des europäischen Menschen” (“a new way of life for European people”) and the restoration, even a genuine rebirth, of Christendom: a deep unity of Empire [Reich] and Church. The “Abendlanders” initially saw the ancient Carolingian empire or the Holy Roman Empire as their model, but they also imagined a connection with Classical Rome (Virgil) and early Christianity.

-John Carter Wood, Christianity and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Europe

The Inherent Fallacy of the Ethnic State

01 Wednesday Aug 2018

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And, still more important, the whole conception [of the nation-state] is opposed to a rule so general that it must be rooted deeply in the nature of mankind. There exists almost no country which could include all the parts of one race without including considerable parts of other races. We are bound to conclude from this that community of language is rarely, if ever, the decisive element to consider in forming states. There are other factors which together, or even occasionally singly, are no less important, e.g. geography, security, religion, economy, tradition, history. And once we override all these elements in favor of one, the linguistic, we are certainly in danger of creating artificial states which cannot last.

-Otto von Habsburg, Danubian Reconstruction 

Europe is the Empire: Contra the False “Christendom” of The Paris Statement

11 Wednesday Oct 2017

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Nationalism is also present wherever the nation is ranked above communities of even higher value, such as larger communities of people or mankind as a whole… The horrible heresy of nationalism not only destroys the unity of the West, but also corrodes each individual nation from within.

-Dietrich von Hildebrand, Austria and Nationalism

The authors of the so-called Paris Statement or “A Europe We Can Believe In” seem to believe that the true meaning of Europe is incompatible with “political empire” and that “resistance to empire” is part of invaluable heritage which Europe is losing to the “faux Christendom of universal human rights”. The authors admit that the “allure of the imperial form endured,” but that “the nation-state prevailed, the political form that joins peoplehood with sovereignty.” Yet is this really true? Is the nation-state “the hallmark of European civilization” that this manifesto claims it to be?

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By the Grace of God

18 Friday Aug 2017

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This era no longer wants us! This era wants to create independent nations-states! People no longer believe in God. The new religion is nationalism. Nations no longer go to church. They go to national associations. The Monarchy, our Monarchy, is founded on piety, on the faith that God chose the Hapsburgs to rule over so and so many Christian peoples. Our Emperor is a secular brother of the Pope, he is His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty; no other is as apostolic, no other majesty in Europe is as dependent on the Grace of God and on the faith of the peoples in the Grace of God… The Emperor of Austria-Hungary must not be abandoned by God.

-Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

The Virtue of Patriotism contra Thearchic Nationalism

13 Tuesday Jun 2017

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The Church is now bringing together what that tower had sundered. Of one tongue there were made many; marvel not: this was the doing of pride. Of many tongues there is made one; marvel not: this was the doing of charity. For although the sounds of tongues are various, in the heart one God is invoked, one peace preserved.

-St. Augustine, Commentary on the Gospel of St. John

In my wanderings in this valley of tears, I have always tried to uphold the virtue of Patriotism, the love of my country, the land and its peoples. I have written in the past about the perversion of Nationalism which daily undermines the true Common Good of the countries it infects. Yet as with all philosophical errors it returns under different forms in different ages. As it was invoked against the Universal Church in the Sacred Ages, now the Nationalists dare even to invoke God for their defense in this Age of Godlessness. Continue reading →

Catholic, Western, and Supranational

26 Thursday Jan 2017

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Austria has always been a stronghold of Catholicism: the former head of the supranational Holy Roman Empire, the secular arm of Christendom, has always been a luminous antithesis to all forms of provincialism. This is not primarily because Austria was the head of a great empire with many inhabitants, but rather because it was Catholic, Western, and supranational…

-Dietrich von Hildebrand, Der Genius Österreichs und der Provinzialismus

Austria, the true heir and embodiment of the Holy Roman Empire, has always reflected in its forms and institutions the true Catholic ideal of the supranational country. Ever since the Roman Empire was transformed into a truly foederatial system in the fifth century Heroic Age has Christendom striven for this ideal. However, in few institutions has this ideal ever been as wholly achieved or pursued as in the Kaiserlich und Königlich Gemeinsame Armee, the Imperial and Royal Common Army, of which the Hapsburg Restoration Movement is in part a spiritual successor and continuation. Therefore, it might be asked, what are the qualities that allowed the K.u.K. Armee to act as a unifying element of the Empire? 

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Was there ever a “Medieval Nationalism”?

11 Wednesday Jan 2017

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The first truly concrete, “systematized” identitarian revolution in Europe is Taboritism, the radical form of Hussitism… This furious explosion of a synthetic mixture of nationalism, socialism, and radical democracy with communist innuendos not only had devastated large parts of Bohemia, Moravia, and Upper Hungary, but also had deeply shaken the social and spiritual fabric of Europe. In their perennial ramifications the shadows of this profound revolution are still with us and will continue to be for some time.

-Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Leftism

Recently I came across an article attempting to claim that Nationalism was not only a political-philosophy that originated in the “Medieval Period,” but that it was the political norm. Referring to the Holy Roman Empire with the absurd (never officially recognized) addition “of the German Nation“ the article goes on to claim that the Crownlands of Empire in the Sacred Ages “included all people of the German nationality,” a falsehood which completely ignores not only the Transylvanian Saxons, but also the Danube Swabians, the Carpathian Germans (Zipsers), the Walddeutsche, the Teutonic Livonians, the Saxons of Schleswig, and the Vosges Germans. Still the questions remain, was there a form of Nationalism present in the Sacred Ages, and was it the prevalent understanding of the political order?

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A Restorationist in the Age of Racialism

07 Wednesday Dec 2016

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The first of these pernicious errors, widespread today, is the forgetfulness of that law of human solidarity and charity which is dictated and imposed by our common origin and by the equality of rational nature in all men, to whatever people they belong, and by the redeeming Sacrifice offered by Jesus Christ on the Altar of the Cross to His Heavenly Father on behalf of sinful mankind.

– Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus

Encouraged by certain “victories”, the world is triumphantly entering a New Age of Nationalism… or so we are told in shouts of jubilation or despair. The sad truth is that the world has never left the downward spiral that is Nationalism; it has merely entered beginning the last phase, Racial Nationalism. That the world has fallen to such lowness is not surprising; such was always the Fate of the Fallen world, and yet we are not bound by that fate, but by Divine Providence alone. With God’s grace we can fight against this marring of the world.

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Patriotism and Nationalism: Ordered Love of Country and Disordered Attachment to Nation

13 Tuesday Sep 2016

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Patriotism, not nationalism, is the ideal political attachment. The patriot is proud of and happy about his country and the variety of cultures, languages, races, institutions, estates and classes, traditions and opinions it harbors. The nationalist is in danger of considering himself (as part of a collective unit) superior to the members of other nationalities (ethnic groups). He comes dangerously close to the racist. His loyalties have taken on a horizontal rather than a vertical character.

Nationalism is a “natural” tendency: the nation is the cultural group one is born into (natus). The patriot, however, takes a supranatural, an ethical stand. He vows loyalty and affection to the country of his birth, of his forebears, or to an adopted fatherland. Indeed, there are great countries on this globe which have grown by virtue of choice and adoption on the part of their citizens rather than by birthrates.

Nationalism (and racism) have repeatedly created dissent, rebellion, and wars. The modern “popular” mass-war has ideological or nationalistic roots and sometimes even racist undertones.

-Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, The Portland Declaration Article 21  

There Never was a “First German Empire”!

10 Saturday Sep 2016

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Holy Roman Empire Allegory

Of course, there was always Germany, in the sense that there were always Germans. But in so far as those Germans had a country, a culture, a common centre of their civilisation, it was never, through all the ages, what we now call Germany. It was what we now call Austria. In so far as they were ruled by a Kaiser, the Emperor of Austria was the one and only Kaiser. In so far as there was a German Empire, the Austrian Empire was the one and only German Empire. They were more loosely federated than the solid nations like France; they could be regarded as small separate kingdoms and dukedoms; but in so far as they were ever one thing, this was the one and only thing. If they belonged to any Empire, it could only conceivably be the Holy Roman Empire, and the great imperial throne upon the Danube.

-G.K. Chesterton, The End of the Armistice

Throughout the Anglosphere since the rise of the heresy of Nationalism (which Deo volente will be the subject of one of my next posts) there has arisen the regrettable practice of referring to the “First German Empire”.  This error pervades even the most well thought out articles, which otherwise provide valid points and arguments. Yet why exactly is this commonplace understanding so much in error?

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