August 18, 2017

THEY'RE NAZIS, NOT FASCISTS:

There Is No Such Thing As White Cultural Heritage. The West's Legacy Is Open To All : Their claims to Western culture--an essentially multi-racial, multi-ethnic legacy--are fake. The alt-right is attacking, not protecting, this culture. (Nathanael Blake, AUGUST 18, 2017, The Federalist)

Is there a common heritage that will cover El Greco and Hume and Dostoyevsky? Is there one that can include the Jacobites and the Jacobins? There is, but it is not racial, and white supremacists reject it because it rejects them. The unifying heritage of Europe is religious and philosophical. It is Jerusalem and Athens, in one famous formulation. Christian religion and Greek philosophy, filtered through Roman law and culture, are the foundation of European culture. The tensions, agreements, developments and settlements between these have shaped the Western world, and these roots of Western civilization are not congenial to white supremacy.

Christianity is universal in its message and Jewish in its origins. For centuries after its founding, Christianity's center was the Mediterranean world, including Asia Minor and North Africa. Christianity has never been defined by race, and locally-grown racist heresies are only sustainable among those ignorant of Christianity's teachings, origins and history.

Greek philosophy is likewise ill-suited to serve as a basis for white identity. It is either too universal (addressing the human condition in general) or too local--none of us live as citizens of an ancient Greek polis. Later philosophical developments in Europe, such as the philosophies of the Enlightenment, likewise tend to be too universal for white supremacists seeking a tribal identity. As for the scientific revolution that developed within Western culture (albeit with much borrowed from outside Europe), math doesn't care what color someone is.

The achievements of European culture in art, literature, philosophy, government, and so on are inseparable from the roots of that culture. Remove the religion and philosophy, and the tapestry of Western culture falls apart, a few disparate threads fluttering to the floor amidst the dust. There is no unified "white" culture or heritage except for that of Western civilization, which is not defined by race and which always reaches beyond race.

Some achievements and developments are only possible under certain cultural conditions, but culture isn't race. Western civilization is not reducible to skin color, and the racist self-declared defenders of European culture are pig-ignorant of it. Indeed, white supremacists hate most of the cultural heritage they ostensibly claim, precisely because it is not defined by, or confined to, any race.

Posted by at August 18, 2017 8:44 AM

  

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