Eric Kaufmann | In Defense of Particularistic Nationalism | NatCon UK

they say Twitter isn't real life but I think there's there's no other conference where so many people that I've met on Twitter I've actually met in real life so um in any case my talk is titled in defense of particularistic nationalism or we could call it in defense of national particularism um I believe the challenge that we face as National conservatives is not actually globalism I actually think EU Davos un could disappear and our challenge would remain because actually the problem in my view is much more about cultural distinctiveness than it is about political sovereignty I'm far more concerned about this loss of Western countries cultural distinctiveness and their ties to previous generations these are challenges that are coming from within and not from without the American sociologists talk at Parsons distinguished between what he called Universal and traditional orientations the universal modern orientation based on achievement and universalism and the traditional orientation based on particularism and ascription now it's a much too crude distinction actually we need both that Accords best with our human nature um but still this is a useful distinction for thinking about the types of national identity national identity isn't a monolithic thing there are different versions of national identity that are always in competition and what we have is a sort of achieved Universalist modern version of national identity and an ascribed particularistic version of national identity rooted in particular myths Collective memories and symbols these are the two competing versions of national identity however in recent decades Britain's political Elite has been relentlessly universalistic in its view of the nation and that includes those who led the official brexit campaign on the left we find a Universalist nationalism that emphasizes moral perfection we call it a woke moral perfection while on the right we have the conservative party emphasizing a kind of GDP nationalism based on economic growth I'm not against moral Improvement or economic growth these are important things but whenever they have conflicted with the protection of British distinctiveness that particularism has gone under the bus and that has resulted in Rapid cultural change and considerable popular unease which as Matt has mentioned was expressed repeatedly for example in the brexit vote and so what this underscores I would argue in for National conservatives is less of a focus on economics Universal ideals or even political sovereignty and much more focus on protecting developing and celebrating National distinctiveness in the culture now this isn't about preserving things in aspect but it is about rebalancing from the Relentless universalism that has characterized previous decades not just in Britain but in North America as well so the progressive left's universalistic nationhood is a moralistic perfectionism it's based on the currency of victimhood and privilege we heard about this from a number of speakers yesterday awoke nationalism is not an oxymoron the prime minister of my country uh pure sorry Justin Trudeau just a true uh I I could actually swap in Pierre as well because they're very similar in many ways but so Trudeau wears rainbow socks he says people kind instead of mankind he lowers the national flag to half mast for months on the in response to the complete hoax of the indigenous Mass Graves he's signaling to the world that Canada is is first among equals when it comes to woke moralism that is actually a form of nationalism based on universal moral perfection now on the right we have also got a universalistic nationalism if we take the American case from Bush senior to Romney we had a fusion of three Universal missionary forms of nationalism the low tax economic libertarianism the neocon militarist Democracy promotion and Evangelical Christian moralism these three things outward facing universalistic lost in all this again is conserving and protecting and developing National particularism and in Britain likewise as we've heard from Matt the emphasis on global free trade that is really what's sacred to the heart of many conservative MPS cultural conservatism is a poor cousin at best a very secondary concern and I think this explains why we've seen immigration at record levels in not only in the Blair years but certainly under Cameron and later under Johnson and Trust the brexit campaign in which a small group of liberal brexiteers hijacked the vote to claim that levers really want it out of the EU so that they could be more open to the world more global while some leave voters may have told reporters this if you look at large-scale data as as I do it's very clear that the best predictors of a leave vote is the desire for lower immigration levels and if you unpick lower immigration levels that correlates very strongly with cultural statements such as British culture was better in the past for example most lead voters or many of them view the rapid changes that have taken place in recent decades as a form of loss and no longer recognize the country that they see on television or in the city streets none of this is racist by the way as I'll explain in a minute so where brexit voters wanted a more culturally secure Britain brexit Elites wanted like Boris Johnson wanted a global Britain in response to the business Lobby and his pro-immigration cabinet Johnson relaxed the rules on Entry issued a million visas visas in 2021 he was followed by Liz truss who was so desperate for a trade deal with India she was willing to entertain selective free movement with a country of 1.4 billion people MP surveys that are more systematic show consistently that Tory MPS are well to the left of their constituents that is of their Tory voters 2019 voters they're far to the left on cultural issues and this is a pattern we see across Europe there's research that shows this as well that conservative MPS and politicians are well to the left of their voters on culture and to the right of them on economics business liberalism not conservatism is what gets conservative MPS up in the morning for the most part um and so what we see with this tension between universalism and particularism is something similar to what we've seen on the right in the 19th century in Britain between little englanders and imperialists the imperialists being more the universalists the little englanders being more the particularists now a lot of little englanders were liberal anti-imperialists but there were also conservative nationalists among them like G.K Chesterton who opposed the Boer War and who wrote in 1904 a healthy man does not demand cosmopolitanism does not demand Empire he demands nationalism something similar in the U us after the Mexican-American War and the Spanish American war where um essentially the imperialists were arguing for annexing Mexico for annexing the Philippines and the national conservative particulars were opposed to annexing these new territories because that would weaken the social cohesion of the United States people like William Jennings Bryan so the reality is most people are attached to the nation primarily through particular characteristics cultural characteristics distinguishing features of nationhood such as history landscape Cuisine Sports and yes ethno-religious composition we have to have that discussion this is not a racist or an exclusionary concept calls for protecting National particularism are instantly greeted with cries with alarmist hysteria and slippery slope fallacy propounded by the progressive commentariat but this doesn't the relative danger of universalism and particularism systematic quantitative studies of genocide risk of countries show that Universalist extremism is as are more dangerous for genocide than particularist extremism so for every Rwanda there's a Cambodia for every Hitler is Stalin and yet we don't seem to be able to grasp this we're always pro-universalist anti-particularists these things have to be balanced whether whether out of ignorance or bad faith progressives are fond of committing the fallacy of composition collapsing discussions about National level cultural protection into questions about individual level membership and belonging it's a bit like saying criticizing the National Health Service is like criticizing nurses no you can criticize at the collective level the NHS without criticizing nurses they're two separate levels let's look at this fallacy of composition with regard to Accent at one level all British accents are sorry all accents are British accents you can have any accent and you should be treated as an equal British person but on the other hand the idea that a British accent is not different from a French French accent is utterly absurd again that's the difference between individual membership criteria all accents are equally British and at the collective National level no the British accent is distinct from other accents and so we can imagine an immigrant within India Indian accent being attached attachment as a feature of their adopted Homeland which they are celebrating so again this distinction between the nation and the individual progressives will always seek to collapse any discussion about cultural conservation into a question about exclusion in membership and we can hold this the same thing holds for a more contentious debates around ethnicity and religion surveys show for example that British seeks view stereotypically English physical traits like pale skin and red or blonde hair as part of their britishness that they are attached to how can that be the case again this doesn't mean British seeks things to think that brown-haired people are second-class Brits it's about the distinction between distinguishing features at the national level and individual membership criteria they're not the same thing Hispanic and Asian Trump voters are as likely as white Trump voters to say it's important to preserve and protect the country's European Heritage how can this be again it's the same Paradox you can't collapse National distinctiveness into a question about membership criteria reducing immigration to slow down the rate of ethnic change therefore is not stop it but to slow it down is something that conservative nationalists of all Races support National conservatives need to begin thinking about these questions of diversity and solidarity the idea that endless diversity is always a good thing no it's not there's an optimal level of diversity in society diversity increases through immigration it declines through assimilation um there's plenty of room for those who don't want to assimilate this shouldn't be a pressured thing um that's fine we we're going to have ethnic diversity but at the same time a preponderant ethnic majority helps to Anchor national identity and prevent politics from running along ethnic lines as it does in deeply diverse societies such as Guyana or Kenya the public record shows by the way as well that if you want to do high that some people argue we can do high immigration we just have to do integration I would challenge anyone in this room to name me a successful policy for reducing residential segregation in any free Society where people are free to move where they wish to move there is no such example and this is why it is key to regulate the pace of immigration that is the only lever that we can control integration and immigration will tend to happen organically so immigration sorry integration and assimilation and so therefore it is vital to regulate the pace of immigration also we heard about Traditions Catherine berblesing mentioned education I want you to imagine a thought experiment in which every Union Jack in the country was replaced by a Chinese flag or some other flag it doesn't really matter you can say that well look as long as people's standard of living the cost of living NHS waiting lists inflation as long as those things aren't affected hey who cares these are just culture wars but actually the tissue of symbol and memory which binds people together which is represented by that flag is very important links them to past generations and what's happening in the school system here as in other parts of the world Canada is perhaps the worst the U.S as well but it's also Happening Here in a in a report for policy exchange I found that three and four British school children had heard radical race and gender Concepts such as white privilege and systemic racism in their schools if you have any understanding that slavery genocide and Conquest were Universal in non-western societies not inventions of white Brits they know nothing about utopian leftist excesses such as the kumeru genocide or stalinist the stalinist genocides in Russia is it any wonder that 60 of 18 to 25 year olds in this country say Britain is a racist country and just 21 have a positive view of Winston Churchill these are tomorrow's voters they've been reared in Britain's education system and the conservatives have allowed this to occur under their watch and even when they have acted late in the game on something like School indoctrination their guidance they've run shy of the educational establishment issuing flabby Guidance with weak enforcement provisions and thus failing to stop this cultural revolution there's simply no British leader with the courage and policy follow-through shown by politicians in the U.S such as Ron DeSantis at bottom the problem is that most British Tories are Universalist nationalists they don't care about these cultural issues they're happy to play in the sandbox that the progressive establishment will allow them to play in called economics because that means they're not going to be called racist when the BBC and the labor party say don't stoke the culture War these useful idiots nod along allowing the woke left to steamroll its way through the institutions with no resistance so just to finish for National conservatism to succeed in Britain Tory MPS must either be converted to the cause of protecting and developing the culture or they must be selected out salience central government the salience of cultural issues needs to be raised the way the salience of the European Union issue was raised and central government is going to have to reassert control over public bodies compelling them to be politically neutral or balanced while making an example of activists that insist repeatedly on injecting woke politics into them the hour is late we have at most a decade or two to turn back this cultural revolution in our schools and in our institutions that is remaking the minds of young people and cutting them off from the bonds that have held the country together for centuries foreign foreign [Applause]

Channel: National Conservatism

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Length: 16min 4sec (964 seconds)

Published: Fri May 19 2023