The perception of Europe in the United States has, over the past few decades, shifted and evolved into some jarringly disfigured homunculus. This is, of course, in response to the question of a “white identity” within America, specifically in attempt to find (or invent) a cultural distinction between white Americans and their non-white cocitizens.
For the white identitarian in America, it is difficult to distinguish themselves culturally from non-white Americans. No white American can claim to be indigenous to the American continent, and if they do it’s through virtue of some non-white heritage. Culturally, a white American goes to the same schools as non-whites, eats the same foods at the same restaurants, lives under the same laws, speaks the same language, and even lives on the same street. There is nothing unique to them in America, and so the “white identity” within America becomes fundamentally meaningless, an empty clause, with meager social or cultural weight.
Europe is necessary to the foundation which allows them to demarcate a specifically “white” identity. Europe, as this fantasized far-away land, serves as a Baudrillardian Disneyland, an exaggerated mythical place from which “white identity” originates and where it is preserved in its platonic form. Europe provides the exclusive, and elusive, totem which differentiates them from other Americans. The Nordicists of Europe some two hundred years ago invented the lands of Agartha and Thule to aid them in their effort, and black nationalists in America have used stylized fantasies of Africa and the Moors to provide a similar service.
The right wing American obsession with European insularity is a key part of their attempt to maintain Europe as the mythical origin of their identity as white Americans. If Europe is no longer exclusively “white” in the eyes of Americans, then it can no longer serve as the basis of their white identity. If Agartha was not purely Nordic, but was to some significant degree African or Chinese, it could no longer serve its purpose as the mythical homeland to the Nordic race. Black nationalists in America are often hostile to the notion of the semitic origin of the Ancient Egyptians, often decrying Arabs in North Africa as colonizers, not native to the continent despite practically all available evidence. In the same way, white American identitarians are often the most outraged towards multiculturalism within Europe, because it threatens the core of their identity itself.
Of course, like Disneyland or Agartha, the American view of Europe has no roots in reality and is purely fantastical. Europe, in the eyes of the white American, must necessarily be presented as a homogeneous mass of whiteness, not as the mosaic quilt of disparate nations with dozens of languages and ethnic identities it really is. This is partly, or perhaps solely, because, as stated before, there is today little cultural distinction between Americans on racial lines, let alone within white Americans on lines of heritage. A white American is a white American, there is no regard as to whether his background is English, German, Italian, French, or more likely some mix of disparate nations. In fact, it matters so little that many don’t even know from where exactly in Europe their ancestors came, owing to the popularity of DNA ancestry tests in the United States. Again, this is markedly similar to the black nationalist view of Africa, as where Europe is from whence the homogenous “white” identity necessarily sprang forth, Africa is from whence the homogenous “black” identity sprang forth.
This growing view of Europe within the United States is unique to the past few decades. Prior to this, the American view of Europe was with some disdain, and the emphasis of American white identity wasn’t on some origin from elsewhere but on the American citizenship itself. This is because, in the past, the most pressing question of American identity wasn’t that of differentiating white Americans from other Americans, but of differentiating white Americans from Europeans. The question of differentiating white Americans from non-white Americans wasn’t pressing as non-white Americans were either not endowed with the same rights as white Americans or simply weren’t present in large enough numbers to be taken as culturally significant. Up until the 2000s, the white demographic made up more than 80% of the country, and the minority was almost entirely comprised of African-Americans, who were thoroughly disenfranchised and held little social capital, presenting little threat to the identity of the white Americans. White Americans then focused their identity on their differentiation from Europe and their disdain for anything “continental”.
There are still strains of this older view of Europe present, though it has become archaic and relegated to certain increasingly shrinking groups of WASPs, such as in J.D. Vance’s near pathologic hate for Europe. That being said, this disdain has still been contorted and beaten to fit into the fantasy of white America’s claim to Europe, in that the decadent Europeans have mismanaged and ruined Europe and that Europe itself could not survive without American assistance, almost to the point of implying that the American has more right to Europe than the European.
The white American view of Europe as a mythical homeland threatens the identity and survival of Europe itself. America is a massive political and cultural force, and more and more Americans are beginning to believe in the myth of a white American co-identity with Europe. There are now people like Elon Musk and others in the American right who believe they know what’s best for Europe, to which their only real connection is the consumption of ragebait content posted on Twitter by anonymous accounts such as Radio Geneva (which is in actuality run by a Cambodian immigrant).
Unfortunately, those in the American right have large amounts of money and influence, which they throw behind such harebrained ideas as supporting Conor McGregor for president of Ireland, Tommy Robinson as prime minister of the United Kingdom, or supporting Geert Wilders as prime minister of the Netherlands. Many white Americans on the right have an obsession with Europe maintaining insularity, and desire that European leaders be clowns embodying the cartoonish ethnic stereotypes of their nation, more concerned with what Americans want for Europe than what Europeans want for Europe.
Right wing American wishes for Europe are purely aesthetic, that Europe be a theme park of white identity, while Europeans, like most other people, wish for greater prosperity, two concerns which are fundamentally opposed. Europe, to preserve itself, must learn to ignore the yearnings of American ideologues and isolate itself from their social pressures.
Leave a Reply