Yep. White supremicists will keep trying various sugar coatings over their hate to sell it as benign mainstream thought.
I wonder what their next BS innovation will be.
Who knows. All I was trying to get at was that the same thing that the “Heritage Americans” idea and people are doing is the same thing I suspected was happening, just in a somewhat different package. And maybe a little bit more charitable.
Nonetheless, they are trying to establish a separate ethnic identity for white people.
To answer the OP, I totally reject any idea of a homogenous society. We should all have our own individual opinions, cultural preferences, and beliefs. Further more to that, we should all have complete freedom to move from one set of beliefs to another, without any censure from persons in authority or any kind of spiritual leaders. Homogenous societies are dead societies.
This does mean that I reject the idea of cultural appropriation as well; if I want to be a Hindu one day and a Muslim or a Jew the next, that option should be open to me. As an old man with a beard, I would instinctively reject anything an old man with a beard told me to do.
Oh no question. The Far Right white supremecist mantras are all there, from replacement theory on, with not much papering over. What you think Vance explicitly naming the Anti Defamation League (ADL, an organization primarily focused on Jew hate but historically against all bigotry and hate groups as well) as people who have less of a right to being “American” than people who are not following the American creeds but whose ancestors were here at the Revolutionary war, is just because? These are Neo Nazi junks of raw meat.
Just for the record, I wasn’t advocating what I was talking about, just saying that it’s what appeared to be happening, and from a certain point of view, it’s understandable that white Americans may want that sort of ethnic identity.
Speaking of happy people. The World Happiness Report 2026, published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, in partnership with Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network shows that the nation of Israel is at the moment happier than that of Switzerland. This is based on Gallup World Poll data and a three-year average of responses.
I find this “a little” surprising. How can Israel rank 8th globally (with a score of 7.19) above Switzerland, which ranks 10th (with a score of 7.02) despite the fact that the state of Israel has been going through wartime conditions lately? The report points to community resilience and strong social bonds.
I think this is interesting because Israel may look homogeneous, but it is in fact one of the most heterogeneous nations in the OECD (which is a UN observer). However, Israel shows a strong social cohesion.
Social cohesion is the key factor. This has three measurable components: bonding cohesion (within groups), bridging cohesion (between groups), and institutional cohesion. Countries like Finland, Denmark, Netherlands, Israel, Switzerland, or New Zealand are strong in all these three components and report high happiness scores.
So yesterday Trump said that Iran should take out a city like Los Angeles or San Diego. The audience in Nebraska applauded.
Which I feel highlights the civic vs ethnic nationalism. The ethnic nationalists (white supremacist, nativist patriarchal christians) feel the civic nationalists (diverse urban liberal democrats) aren’t really Americans, but are an active threat to (their version of) America and Iran bombing them would be a good thing.
Meanwhile the civic nationalists see the erosion of human rights, democracy, competence and security under the ethnic nationalists, and see the ethnic nationalists as a threat to a functioning society.
We’re pretty much fucked.
The folk that come to cheer Trump still at this point are ethnic nationalists to be sure.
And the roughly 36% that still approve of his performance are probably the ethnic nationalists. The 61% who disapprove probably aren’t. They wouldn’t all endorse civic nationalism but probably the vast majority of them would.
I’d WAG that ethnic nationalists are a pretty consistent minority over time. Or at least no consistent trend.
One poll that confirms that estImate of how many of us are which:
63 percent of Americans prefer the statement that we are united “not by a shared religion or ancestry or history, but by our shared commitment to a set of American founding ideals: that we all have inherent and equal rights to live, to not be tyrannized, and to pursue happiness as we each understand it” over one embraced by 33 percent of respondents that says we are united “by shared history, traditions, and values and by our fortitude and character as Americans, a people who value hard work, individual responsibility, and national loyalty.”
That ethic nationalism framing that was the minority perspective - overwhelmingly concentrated among
Republicans and those who voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
The existence of an ethic nationalist minority does not fuck us. A Trump rally attracting them does not surprise.
I’d tweak that a little bit to make it about political homogeneity. I’ve once attended a MAGA-ish event (I didn’t realize it was going to be one) that was about the most racially diverse gathering I’d ever been in. Indeed, white people were a minority in that building. But they were all of the same lockstep right-wing mindset. Without a doubt, many of the Hispanic/other-minority MAGA folks there would have loudly cheered and laughed at Trump’s comments about Iran and Los Angeles and San Diego.
One characteristic of Democratic presidents like Obama, Biden, Clinton, etc. was them speaking about political diversity - no doubt, they would never have said Iran should get to nuke rural Alabama or Oklahoma. The MAGA mindset isn’t about race, it’s about political loyalty, and many racial-minority MAGA would happily let Iran nuke white liberals. MAGA welcomes every racial group voter onboard as long as they’re MAGA, and wishes for the disappearance of every liberal, no matter how white.
When looking for the polling data in my last post I found a different one from 2020 that wasn’t quite asking what I was after but is relevant here - when “ethnic nationalism” is defined as endorsing that a “real American” is defined by “being Christian, speaking English, being born in America, and having lived in America for most of one’s life.” then “respondents who identify as Black are more likely than white respondents to hold an ethnically nationalist view” Hispanic Americans not too far behind.
I’m thinking that, in general, the group that holds the strongest ethically nationalistic view is going to be the newest large group here which, at this time, is the Latino population. In the first half of the 20th century, Italians had a very strong ethically nationalistic view; i.e., language, customs, even their organized crime structure was from the old country. An exception would be the Blacks who certainly aren’t anywhere near being the newest, but they have been separated and oppressed to this day.
Boy, identity politics are complicated.
Yeah, until they don’t need them anymore. MAGA will treat non-whites the way the Nazis treated the SA. They were useful until they weren’t needed anymore, then they were targeted. A lot of Jews supported the Nazis at first too, but once the Nazis didn’t need them anymore they became targets.
MAGA will welcome non-whites into the coalition, until their power is strong enough that they don’t need blacks, latinos, etc anymore. Then they become targets.
Exactly.
And so, eventually, if they get that far, will whatever Christian whites are judged to be not quite the right kind of Christian. Or not defined as “white” any longer. Or not holding exactly the right sort of politics. Or any other division that can be manufactured.
Politics based on hate and fear must have outgroups. And the inner circle shrinks, until it eats itself. Too late for all the people it ate first, of course.