Four Western national futures

And the necessary conditions and likelihood of each one

This post will lay out various plausible futures for Western countries with regards to national identity, and the likelihood and necessary conditions for each one.

‘Western values’: civic nationalist maintenance and reinforcement

This scenario is pretty much a continuation of the ‘official’ national identity of the centrist factions of left and right wing parties in the West today, i.e. rhetorically taking great pride in the nation but based on non-ethnic, civic nationalist principles such as tolerance of difference, liberty and the rule of law. These universal principles will continue to be grounded in national history, e.g. for Britain the traditions of legal limits to state power and the offering of sanctuary to refugees, for the US the declaration of independence and the civil rights act, for France liberty, equality, fraternity etc. Immigration continues to be ethnically blind, meaning that the majority of immigrants are non-Western, but numbers are limited to some extent due to a shared acceptance of the importance of keeping the pace of change slow enough that integration and assimilation can take place. Contemporary Danish policy could be a model here. The historic myths and symbols of the nation persist, joined and transformed by ones representing the new immigrant populations, but not denigrated and replaced.

Likelihood and necessary conditions

This scenario pretty much requires the maintenance of current conditions, i.e. the continuing resilience of the political centre against the extremes in terms of identity and the continuing pre-eminence of liberalism as the ruling ideology.

It could be fatally undermined by any sort of conflict or crisis, either an economic one which would undermine the liberal system which gives credence to the national ideology, or a security one like increased levels of violent unrest or terrorism either from the core ethnicity or from a minority community, perhaps in response to an unpopular war or to inter-communal social problems that expose its precepts as straining credulity, e.g. the grooming gangs of Britain.

It would be strengthened by continuing and increasing high levels of intermarriage between immigrant groups and the core ethnicity, and by ethnic minority communities becoming more firmly established and confident in their identity as part of the nation.

This future then is most likely if current conditions persist. If they do not, then the system will become unstable and it is hard to see how it could continue, relying as it does on the continued strength of global liberalism.

Successful ethno-nationalist revival

In this scenario Western countries continue to diversify but they do not unify, the idea that the great replacement is happening becomes accepted as it becomes clear that the historically central ethnicity really is going to ‘lose its country’ within people’s current lifetimes. Woke leftism continues to become more extreme, and fails to persuade enough of the core ethnicity of its merits, in fact its excesses cause many to react against it. Assimilation also fails to create a new hybrid ethnicity: the core ethnic identity persists, with the offspring of intermarried couples either adopting or rejecting it rather than creating a hybrid identity, keeping the boundaries in place.

Ethno-nationalist political movements like Zemmour’s/Le Pen’s continue to gain in strength until they start to win elections. The official liberal approach to ethnicity is ended, a more Israeli-style one is instituted, the historically core ethnicity is officially declared as defining the nation, and policy, especially immigration policy, is directed towards preserving it. Russia, with its 2020 constitutional amendment referring to a ‘state-forming people’, or Israel’s basic law that it is the nation-state of the Jewish people are existing models here.

Likelihood and necessary conditions

The support of two sections of the population would be necessary for this scenario to occur. One would be ‘white working class’ continuing the trend to support parties which are implicitly or explicitly ethno-nationalist. The other would be a defection of a significant part of the elite to a new ethno-nationalist ethos. For this defection to happen, the balance of opportunities available in the liberal world order versus world of illiberal nation-states would have to change. Currently, the liberal world order offers many more opportunities for the educated and ambitious, so some sort of collapse or serious degeneration in this order coupled with events which sharpen ethnic boundaries (like a new military conflict with a Muslim nation leading to an outbreak of terrorism), would be necessary.

Therefore any move towards this collapse would make this scenario much more likely. However whether an ethno-nationalist revival could win against the forces arrayed against it in a diverse and historically liberal state is another question.

Woke-leftism becomes the new Leitkultur

This scenario posits a woke-left identity becoming hegemonic and assimilating both immigrants and the core ethnicity. Western nations come to define themselves explicitly in terms of being against what they used to be (homogenous, white, rooted in a particular people’s history and culture), now they are defined by being diverse, against the idea of a core ethnicity, and by their struggle against the sins of the past. Immigrants and their descendants are symbolically positioned as redeemers of the nation from this past. The ‘flight from white’ accelerates, as members of the core ethnicity scramble to construct a new identity for themselves that accords with wider cultural norms of, in the simplest terms, what is good and what is bad. As inter-ethnic marriage continues, this identity switching becomes more feasible for more people as they have a wider range of ancestry to select from. High levels of immigration continue, but the flight from white is even more significant in the process of change, leading to national identity changing much faster than the actual underlying demographics do. The result is a kind of mestizo identity, but one that defines itself against what came before it, even if genetically speaking the core ethnicity’s ancestry makes up a plurality of it.

Likelihood and necessary conditions

For this to come to pass, the woke leftist culture which is dominant in some sections of society but resisted in others would have to become hegemonic. Based on current trends, all that would be needed for this to happen would be for the demographics where this culture is strongest (the young and university educated) to continue to rise into positions where they set the mainstream cultural tone.

This move would continue to cause strong resistance in the rest of society due to its open denigration of the traditional national culture, but if this opposition was overcome, in a sense it could be a narrative of unity, because the core ethnicity can assimilate to it as long as they are willing to perform the self-abnegation required, and those from immigrant groups can get behind it in their assigned role as the redeemers of the nation. Therefore in functional terms there are reasons to believe that this future is at least as likely as the ‘civic nationalist western values’ one.

This scenario would also ease the continual flow of new migrants into ageing Western societies, with an ideology into which they can swiftly be assimilated (after a fashion), as woke-leftism, despite appearances, is deeply corrosive of all traditional cultures. Even civic nationalism could lead towards immigration restriction as a nationally specific identity would still develop, which any new potential immigrants would not initially share. But if identity is defined as an ‘anti’ sense, there could not really be any justification for immigration restrictions at all.

Hard multiculturalism (a 21st century millet system)

Contemporary multiculturalism is only surface level (food, music etc), liberalism still rules underneath. A historical example of true / hard multiculturalism is the Ottoman millet system, where religious communities were left to be largely self-governing when it came to legal disputes between their members and the collection of taxes. In this future scenario of hard multiculturalism the liberal/left designs of either a new civic nationalist or woke-left identity fail to take hold, and cross-ethnic conservative cultural revivals take place, caused perhaps by a woke-leftism that has alienated too much of the population, or perhaps there is some collapse in the liberal order leading to a ‘centre that cannot hold’. However, in contrast to the ethno-nationalist revival scenario, in this one the historic core group is not strong/numerous enough to capture the state for itself, while there is little support from any group for continuing the liberal soft-multicultural experiment.

So an Ottoman-style millet system compromise is reached; one much more akin to true multiculturalism taken to its logical conclusion. Agreeing on a national curriculum becomes impossible, so religious schools become the basis for a new segregated education system, with either a ‘secular millet’ or a ‘soft christian’ one providing a place for the historic core ethnicity. Any true national cultural institutions (e.g. national broadcasters) wither into irrelevance, and the population groups silo themselves into separate media environments.

An official liberal egalitarian framework remains on top of the millets, but true loyalty and influence lies with the latter. Politically, coalitions between explicitly or implicitly ethnically or religiously based parties become the norm. Politics becomes about compromises between them and a fight for state resources, the central state can take little unified action, especially when it comes to foreign policy.

What would domestic political fights be over, and what would the ‘leaders of the millets’ try and procure for their communities? Control and funds for their specific education system would be a big one, as would tax breaks for religiously linked institutions. Legally recognised private security could be another, like the Shomrim; this would be made more urgent by a withering away of the police (no longer able to exert its authority as a non-millet institution). Control over aspects of family life would be another, like preventing cross-millet adoptions, and perhaps even the legal recognition of non-Western family life, especially polygamy (perhaps in alliance with polyamorists, as Steve Sailer has hypothesised).

Likelihood and necessary conditions

There are some potential contemporary indicators of this scenario, especially post-2020, with the new rise of woke-justified ethnic segregation in US universities, or calls for a ‘Black University’ in the UK. However, the original millet system arose in a pre-liberal age and was the response to a diverse society that made sense in this context; it lost influence with the rise of secular legal codes. So for this scenario to emerge there would be to be a drastic and almost complete breakdown of the liberal system.

But perhaps a hidden millet system is more likely, where legal equality is maintained, but in practice much cultural life becomes segregated. Even this scenario though is made less plausible by high rates of intermarriage and the power of internet enabled universalist culture.

Conclusion

Based on current trends, I believe that woke leftism has the greatest chance of becoming the new dominant identity, due its popularity with young people and in high status cultural production. Given a backlash against woke-leftism through, current ‘western values’ civic nationalism could persist as a compromise.

However if we see a crisis or collapse in global liberalism, either an ethno-nationalist revival or a new millet system are eminently possible.