Precursors of the Alt-Right: Individualism vs. Cultural Community 1

Important: See #FMA (For Mature Audiences) #Alt_Right

Introduction

Ever since the election of Trump, I've worked to try to understand how about 1/3 of my fellow Americans can support him and think he's doing a good job and especially try to understand an Alt-Right movement that sounds to my untutored ears like fascism with a public relations firm.

And in many cases it is fascism  with a public relations firm - but as I delve into this on my authority as a seminary-trained amateur, I'm finding that the Alt-Right has deep historical roots in European history (including, to continue the metaphor, the branch that became white supremecy and / or fascism), particularly as aspects of the Romantic revolt against Enlightenment values of individual rights and freedom, materialism, and what they considered the sterility of rationalism and empiricism as "ways of knowing."

Instead of writing one, massive, well-documented opus - mostly because that is now and possibly forever beyond my ability - I've decided to eat this elephant one bite at a time, posting content from contemporary Alt-Right sources (that will not all agree with each other let alone with Enlightenment liberalism) alongside what I deem relevant historical content from Wikipedia - for whatever that might be worth as a source.

Then, I welcome feedback, either on Facebook or here. I believe I've set comments to forward to my bill.bekkenhuis@gmail.com address.

So here goes...

Individualism vs Cultural Community (Contemporary)

History, literature, religion and philosophy tell us who we are, not because of some grand unifying universal principle, but because they place us within the bounds of a heritage, a nation, a people. In the 1840s the concept of the “Russian Soul” or dushá came about from the writings of such greats as Gogol, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky. The Russian Soul was primarily literary in nature. It helped readers understand the nature of Russian spirituality. But it also spoke to the essence of the Russian people. The dushá gave the world a sense of the Russians in a specific time and place. It is not unreasonable to carry forth this concept and say that all people have a soul which is understood through their culture.

That is why we study history and literature. We require an understanding of who we are as a people so that we as a people may continue to live. We study the national character of our people so that no matter where on earth we are, the children of Europe will always have a sense of who they are, and where they came from. To steal from a people their heritage, which was left to them by their forefathers, is an abomination.

*   *   *

History may concern the past, but it is far from dead. Quite the contrary, history is alive, but it can only live in the hearts of those dedicated to the preservation of the memory of their people. It can only live when the heirs of Europe hold their history as if it were a precious flame and must guard it against the storm. Without fire early man was dead. Without history, our civilization too shall die. Like the fire warming the hearth of a Roman home, history and culture are the fires that burn inside us to keep the legacy of our forefathers alive.

The Left Alienates Whites From Our History And Culture
Everitt Foster  May 22, 2017
Alt-Right.com


Individualism vs Cultural Community (19th Century)

Herder attached exceptional importance to the concept of nationality and of patriotism – "he that has lost his patriotic spirit has lost himself and the whole worlds about himself", whilst teaching that "in a certain sense every human perfection is national". Herder carried folk theory to an extreme by maintaining that "there is only one class in the state, the Volk, (not the rabble), and the king belongs to this class as well as the peasant". Explanation that the Volk was not the rabble was a novel conception in this era, and with Herder can be seen the emergence of "the people" as the basis for the emergence of a classless but hierarchical national body.

The nation, however, was individual and separate, distinguished, to Herder, by climate, education, foreign intercourse, tradition and heredity. Providence he praised for having "wonderfully separated nationalities not only by woods and mountains, seas and deserts, rivers and climates, but more particularly by languages, inclinations and characters". Herder praised the tribal outlook writing that "the savage who loves himself, his wife and child with quiet joy and glows with limited activity of his tribe as for his own life is in my opinion a more real being than that cultivated shadow who is enraptured with the shadow of the whole species", isolated since "each nationality contains its centre of happiness within itself, as a bullet the centre of gravity". With no need for comparison since "every nation bears in itself the standard of its perfection, totally independent of all comparison with that of others" for "do not nationalities differ in everything, in poetry, in appearance, in tastes, in usages, customs and languages? Must not religion which partakes of these also differ among the nationalities?"

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744 - 1803) [Wikipedia]