by Greg Johnson
We already have here in America an experiment in intra-European cross-breeding, which may produce productive and useful stabilized blends—all at relatively minimal costs to ethnic genetic interests due to the relative genetic closeness of Europeans. However, responsible stewardship of our ethnoracial-genetic patrimony requires that we at least maintain the original ethnic stocks in their European homelands. If these stocks are completely hybridized out of existence, the loss would be permanent and irreversible. I do not believe that the genetic diversity that currently characterizes the extant European ethnies should be lost; while additional stocks and additional diversity may be created in the Diaspora through cross-ethnic mating and breed stabilization, the original genetic strains of Europe need to be preserved.
Indeed, it is wrong to completely erase any legitimate differences between peoples, including groups that are relatively highly related: Norwegians and Swedes are not interchangeable, Englishmen and Danes are not interchangeable, Germans and the Dutch are not interchangeable, Italians and Greeks are not interchangeable, Spaniards and Portuguese are not interchangeable, and Russians and Poles are not interchangeable. And while the differences between the major subraces are certainly greater than that between groups within each subrace, one cannot draw a line within Europe and say that one group of differences are completely inconsequential, and another group of differences are absolutely essential. At the intra-continental level, it is a difference of degree. This can be contrasted to the wider gulf that exists between continental groups, differences that are magnified, in a synergistic fashion, by the overlay of the great civilizational divides.
In summary, pan-Europeanism is an ideology which respects, strives to preserve, and fights for the interests of, all peoples of European descent worldwide—whether these peoples are of single ethnic origin or if they are of “combinative” ethnic European ancestry. There is nothing in this definition which asserts that panmixia must take place and certainly nothing which can be characterized as a lack of interest in preserving various ethnies (keeping in mind, of course, that “ethny” is not always the same as “ethnic group”). To say that pan-Europeanists in general do not see an intrinsic value in individual ethnic groups is simply not true. Thus I argue against the assertion that pan-Europeanism means that all whites are “fungible” and “interchangeable” and that this will lead to a panmixia resulting in a complete loss of biological and cultural particularisms. Instead, pan-Europeanism is better viewed as a cooperative effort, aimed toward the objective of Race-Culture preservation and renewal, an effort that recognizes both the differences and the commonalities of Western peoples.
HISTORY
A brief history of pan-European racial nationalism is summarized below, to contrast to some assertions concerning the origins of pan-European racial nationalism.
Pre-WWII pan-Europeanism had a varied pedigree, including of course Nietzsche’s call to be a “good European,” and the thoughts of individuals such as William Penn, Napoleon Bonaparte, Victor Hugo, and Giuseppe Mazzini—all focused on a pan-Europeanism that would preserve the diversity of the European peoples within the large context of unity. What about more recent pan-Europeanism?
In Dreamer of the Day,95 Kevin Coogan describes one strand of pan-European thought that originated from competing visions within National Socialist (NS) Germany. Coogan identifies two SS factions: the so-called völkisch, Germanic, Nordicist “Black SS” whose ideology was based on the work of Hans F. K. Günther; and the pan-European, pan-Aryan “Waffen SS” faction led by SS Brigadier General Franz Alfred Six, SS Lieutenant General Werner Best, and SS Colonel Alfred Franke-Gricksch.
For most of the NS regime, the “Black SS” was dominant; however, after Stalingrad, the need for a pan-European crusade against Bolshevism, as well as a growing realization that the war may be lost and the groundwork for a post-war movement needed to be begun, led to a shift in power to the pan-European SS faction.
One consequence of this change in emphasis was the “rehabilitation” within the SS of the Italian theorist Julius Evola, who was recruited into the Germans’ pan-European program. The Italian connection to this German-dominated movement also leads us to consider Mussolini’s contributions; for example, before he fell into Hitler’s orbit, Il Duce promoted such activities as the pan-European “pan-Fascist” Montreux conference of 1934. In addition, in his last years, during the Italian Social Republic, Mussolini promoted the idea of a unified and socialist/fascist (western) Europe.
After the war, a number of individuals and groups continued to promote a pan-European fascist/racial nationalist perspective. Francis Parker Yockey of course comes to mind, as does Oswald Mosley, with his “Europe a Nation” idea. Indeed, the following description of Mosley’s ideas is of relevance, stressing as it does the fundamental point that a larger scale interest in Europe as a whole does not preclude narrower, national-ethny interests:
In October 1948—the dangerous year of Stalin’s blockade of Berlin—Mosley spoke to an enthusiastic meeting of East London workers and called for “the making of Europe a Nation.” Yet, as he said in later years, making Europe into a nation with its own common government did not make him feel any less an Englishman, and an Englishman of Staffordshire where he was born. All other Europeans, Normans and Bretons, Bavarians and Prussians, Neapolitans and Milanese, would through his idea remain Frenchmen, Germans, and Italians, as would Britons remain Britons, yet they would all think and act together as Europeans.
In those later years he also proposed a three-tier order of governments in Europe, each with a different function. In fact this was taking the best part of the old fascism, the corporate state, and the best of the old democracy, creating something higher and finer than either, through yet another synthesis. The corporate state had envisaged the nation like a human body, having a head, with a brain, with all members of the body working together in political harmony. Thus in Mosley’s vision of the future nation of Europe the first tier, the head, would be a common government—freely elected by all Europeans—for Europe’s defense and to organize a single continental economy. The second tier would be national governments for all national questions—elected as today—and at the third level many local governments for the regions and small nations like Wales and Scotland. They would have the special task of preserving the wide diversity of Europe’s cultural life: regional democracy with a new meaning.
Mosley’s concept of Europe thus went much further than the present “European Community” and was a direct contrast with it, replacing the national jealousies and economic rivalry of today’s “common market” with an essential harmony. “Europe a Nation” included the whole life of the continent from the head organizing a single economy down to the many cultures of Europe. It was perhaps his greatest concept: a new order of governments giving a new meaning to democracy, to be achieved through a synthesis of those two old opponents, pre-war fascism and pre-war democracy.96
The journal Nation Europa, founded by Arthur Ehrhardt and Herbert Boehme, with support from Swedish far-Rightist Per Engdahl, also strongly promoted a pan-European “Mosleyite” agenda. Coogan discusses other theorists and activists, but it is well established that modern pan-European racial nationalism in Europe has a pedigree going back to the attempts of pre-war, and war-era, (real) fascists and “fascists” to develop an ideology beyond that of narrow single-state nationalism.
In America, before the war, Lothrop Stoddard in Re-forging America argued for assimilation of the “white ethnics” and the need for white solidarity against the rising tide of color. Similarly, Charles Lindbergh, in a famous pre-war essay on aviation and race stated:
We, the heirs of European culture, are on the verge of a disastrous war, a war within our own family of nations, a war which will reduce the strength and destroy the treasures of the White race, a war which may even lead to the end of our civilization. And while we stand poised for battle, Oriental guns are turning westward, Asia presses towards us on the Russian bor
der, all foreign races stir restlessly. It is time to turn from our quarrels and to build our White ramparts again. This alliance with foreign races means nothing but death to us. It is our turn to guard our heritage from Mongol and Persian and Moor, before we become engulfed in a limitless foreign sea. Our civilization depends on a united strength among ourselves; on strength too great for foreign armies to challenge; on a Western Wall of race and arms which can hold back either a Genghis Khan or the infiltration of inferior blood; on an English fleet, a German air force, a French army, an American nation, standing together as guardians of our common heritage, sharing strength, dividing influence.97
Other factors leading to a pan-European White Nationalism in America include the assimilation of the aforementioned “white ethnics”; the “civil rights movement” which counter-posed general white interests with those of Negroes, Levantines, and other “colored” groups; and the mass post-1965 immigration which even more sharply contrasted the differences between white Americans, derived from the Western civilization, and the hordes of others.
A useful simplification suggests that in Europe (where ethnic, single-state nationalism is still a potent force) pan-Europeanism was initially a top-down phenomenon theorized by “far-Right elites,” while in America, it has been predominantly characterized by “bottom-up” growth due to “white ethnic” assimilation coupled to a growing and increasingly militant colored populace. Today’s global pan-Europeanism, joining like-minded activists in Europe and the European Diaspora, is the result of a convergence of these European and American trends.
The growing race/immigration/Islamic problem in Europe, concerns about Turkey in the EU, along with the understandable reaction to the two World Wars and the consequences of intra-European hostility, has led a growth in “bottom-up” pan-Europeanism in Europe; while the increasing theoretical depth of American White Nationalism, and the recognition that America’s race problem is of global scope, has led to increased “top-down” pan-Europeanism in the Diaspora. This convergence, over time, may lead to increased integration between European and Euro-American pan-European nationalists.
From a very broad, sweeping historical perspective, Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Empire, Napoleon, Mussolini, and even Hitler, can be viewed as attempts to restore the earlier unity of the Roman Empire; in other words, these were attempts to build a new empire of the West. For centuries in the modern historical era, Latin was the common language of educated people throughout the West. Orders like the Knights Hospitallers were drawn from various nations of Western Europe, together fighting for Europe and the West. And the contribution of our eastern European brothers to the defense of the West is also a fact of history (e.g., Poles vs. Turks at Vienna). That the theme of Western Unity has existed as an undercurrent throughout Europe since the birth of the modern “Western” or “Faustian” High Culture cannot be denied.
Also of relevance are Greg Johnson’s comments at the Counter-Currents website:
If you go back far enough in history, you find times, such as the high Middle Ages, when there was a sense of the unity of the European race. Petty state nationalism is a far more modern phenomenon. . . . During the high Middle Ages, there was a sense of European Unity as “Christendom” that was not explicitly racial but was implicitly so. The first Crusade in particular was an expression of this sense of unity. Of course even then Christianity was not coextensive with the European race, for there were Nestorian and Arab and African Christians, but the average European did not know that.
If you go back even farther, you find the essential genetic unity of all European peoples. The concept of “whiteness” today can be seen as an attempt to recapture that essential unity. . . . In North America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, the mixing of recently differentiated European stocks is bringing us back to that original unity.
Whiteness also is natural as a unifying concept in the face of non-whites, particularly in the colonies. . . . In the end, though, the political validity of the concept of whiteness has nothing to do with its temporal pedigree, but with the fact that all whites are perceived by our enemies as essentially the same, thus we are treated as the same. Our skin is our uniform in the global struggle for domination.98
Which is an effective summary of the fundamental thesis of the current essay.
This historical survey is not meant as an “appeal to authority”; the pan-European idea should today be evaluated on its own merits. However, it is important to contrast the actual historical background with contrary assertions that modern pan-Europeanism is merely the recent invention of ethnically self-interested activists narrowly derived from specific areas of Europe (e.g., Norman Lowell has been unfairly criticized in this regard). Whether or not one agrees with pan-Europeanism, the origins of this worldview have strong roots throughout Europe (at least, Western Europe), and individuals of varied ethnic/subracial European ancestries have championed the idea throughout the centuries—and, in some cases, like the knightly orders, put the idea into practice.
CULTURE, CIVILIZATION, YOCKEY, & SOME BIOLOGY
One thread which is often prominent in modern pan-European thought is the work of its foremost post-war proponent: Francis Parker Yockey. It is therefore important to take a brief look at some of Yockey’s relevant statements on this issue.
In The Proclamation of London Yockey wrote:
From the beginning, the Western Culture has been a spiritual unit. This basic, universally formative fact is in the sharpest contrast to the shallow and ignorant outlook of those who pretend that the unity of the West is a new idea, a technical thing which can only be brought about on a limited and conditional basis.
From its very birth-cry in the Crusades, the Western Culture had one State, with the Emperor at its head, one Church and religion, Gothic Christianity, with an authoritarian Pope, one race, one nation, and one people, which felt itself, and was recognized by all outer forces, to be distinct and unitary. There was a universal style, Gothic, which inspired and informed all art from the crafts to the cathedrals. There was one ethical code for the Culture-bearing stratum, Western chivalry, founded on a purely Western feeling of honour. There was a universal language, Latin, and a universal law, Roman law. Even in the very adoption of older, non-Western things, the West was unitary. It made such things into an expression of its proper soul, and it universalized them.
More important than anything else, this Culture felt itself to be a power-unit as against all outer forces, whether barbarians like the Slavs, Turks, and Mongols, or civilized like the Moors, Jews, and Saracens. Embryonic national differences existed even then within the West, but these differences were not felt as contrasts, and could not possibly become at that time the focus of a struggle for power. A Western knight was fighting equally for his Fatherland whether in battle against the Slav or the Turk on the Eastern Marshes of Germany, against the Moor in Spain, Italy, or Sicily, or against the Saracen in the Levant. The outer forces recognized as well this inner unity of the West. To Islam, all Westerners whatever were lumped together as Franks, giaours.
This higher Cultural unity embraced within its rich possibilities the several Nation-Ideas which were to actualize so much of Western history, for it is obviously a part of the divine plan that a High Culture create as phases of its own unfolding, not only higher aesthetic units, schools of music, painting, and lyric, higher religious and philosophical units, schools of mysticism and theology, higher bodies of nature-knowledge, schools of technics and scientific research, but also higher power-units within itself, Emperor versus papacy, Estates versus Emperor and Pope, Fronde versus King, Nation versus Nation. In Gothic times, the intra-Cultural power struggle between Emperor and Pope was always strictly subordinated, by the universal conscience, to the outer tension with the non-member of the Culture, the barbarian and heathen. The Nations existed then, but not as power-units, not as political organisms. The members of the nations felt themselves to be different from one another, but the differences were in no
case determining of the whole orientation to life. A Slavic, Turkish, or Moorish attack on Europe was met by forces drawn from all parts of Europe. . . . In this great struggle for the Liberation of Europe, every European of race, honour, and pride belongs with us, regardless of his provenance.99
And, importantly, considering the issue of preserving intra-European differences:
Local cultures in Europe may be as diversified as they wish, and they will enjoy a perfect autonomy in the European Imperium . . .
Please note that I do not agree with Yockey’s oft-cited hostility toward Slavs and other eastern Europeans, for these people need to be fully integrated into the pan-European project. Preferably, the eastern Europeans can join their western brethren in the same racial-civilizational entity, but if this is not possible then at least we need to have closely linked and cooperative dual white entities, perhaps analogous to the western and eastern halves of the latter Roman Empire. In any case, we are in this together. Indeed, there are those in Russia who know what is at stake and who are willing to cooperate to save white civilization; for example Dmitry Rogozin.100
In Imperium Yockey wrote, at different places throughout the book:
If any Westerner thinks that the barbarian makes nice distinctions between the former nations of the West, he is incapable of understanding the feelings of populations outside a High Culture toward that Culture. . . .
. . . But the greatest opposition of all has not yet been named, the conflict which will take up all the others into itself. This is the battle of the Idea of the Unity of the West against the nationalism of the 19th century. Here stand opposed the ideas of Empire and petty-stateism, large-space thinking and political provincialism. Here find themselves opposed the miserable collection of yesterday-patriots and the custodians of the Future. The yesterday-nationalists are nothing but the puppets of the extra-European forces who conquer Europe by dividing it. To the enemies of Europe, there must be no rapprochement, no understanding, no union of the old units of Europe into a new unit, capable of carrying on 20th century politics. . . .