The Wrong Side of History

Steve Sailer has a snarky post up about the European elections. Everyone on the authentic Right, as opposed to mainstream Right, is celebrating the results. For lack of a better way of phrasing it, the authentic Right is the national populist types, who reject post-modern cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism. The mainstream Right are just libertarian cosmopolitans. They support the cultural project of the Left, but would like to rig the market to achieve it.

The joy is understandable to some degree. On the one hand, it is clearly a rejection of the open borders, white replacement strategy of the elites. In France, a vote for National Front is a vote against immigration. No Frenchman voted for National Front thinking they were anything other than hostile to immigration. They are also hostile to non-French people, as in those not biologically French. The National Front rejects paper citizenship, as does all authentically right-wing parties.

Then there is a strong anti-elite element too. Farage and UKIP are old school populists as much as they are anti-immigrant. The Tories have wandered off into some weird ideological place in search of a constituency. Their old voters have no other place to go so they are voting for Farage. UKIP is probably just the old Tory party bursting forth from the dying husk of the new Tory party. Still, it says that old populist instinct is still alive in the heart of the average Englishman.

It is easy to think the tide may be turning, but that is probably not true. UKIP is the real deal, but the leadership lacks the sort of professionalism needed to make them a legitimate mainstream party. They are building a party from the ground up and will have the boots on the ground to make noise in subsequent elections, but they have a lot of weirdos and kooks as well. Those kooks and weirdos can easily topple over the whole thing before the next election.

The Continent is a similar story. These elections were low-turnout symbolic actions by the most highly motivated part of the anti-elite electorate. There’s little evidence FN can build on to this and become a player in French politics. Syriza is the real deal in Greece, but let’s not kid ourselves about the importance of Greece. In Germany, the only country that matters in Europe right now, anti-EU forces have not made much noise at all. In short, one election does not mean much.

There’s something else. The march of human history is toward larger and larger organizational units. For about 35,000 years, modern humans were in groups no larger than about 150. That was the practical limit for a hunter-gatherer people. Once the group got too big, it split up. We can’t know for sure, of course, but the current science suggests trust beyond kin was not well developed at this stage. Once you get beyond 150 people, you start having unrelated males thrown in together, which is going to be trouble for obvious reasons.

Once humans began to settle, the organizational groups got bigger. Farming naturally brings trading and property ownership. That requires more complex relationships. It also requires trust between unrelated males. The traits and customs allowing for unrelated males to trust one another and adjudicate breeches in trust probably developed in tandem as human settlements grew larger.

Hierarchical relationships also had to develop as someone had to be in charge to enforce the rules. If you look at early British history, for example, ruling families were the dominant hierarchical relationship. The descendants of Ida ruled parts of Britain for generations. This was not an ideal solution, but it was a solution that was workable for the people at the time. Extended family rule was a solution to getting distantly related people to cooperate and keep the peace.

Over time city-states developed and they were replaced by combinations of cities that eventually became principalities. Most of the European history we learn in school is the battle over the consolidation of lands into nations. From the 100 Years War through World War Two, the people of Europe battled to figure out the boundaries and relationships of the nations of the continent. The end point of this was the nation-state as we came to understand it in the 20th century.

Post-War Europe has been an extended debate over how to build a Europe-wide organizational unit. Eliminating trade barriers eliminates a key role of national government. The free flow of people eliminates a reason for national borders and even national governments. Combining currencies further erodes the rationale for national governments and the very idea of a secular nation.

It is not just Europe. Relationships between countries over trade and property are now managed through supranational organizations. When the US has a dispute with China over trade, it goes to some international body for adjudication. Congress has no say and the people are not consulted. Treaty agreements are being crafted to get around pesky legal problems like the US Constitution. The United Nations Arms Trade Treaty is an attempt to junk the Second Amendment through international agreement.

Then we have the interlocking central banks and shadowy financial institutions that control the world’s financial system. The high level of coordination between the main banks and the IMF very well may be the main peace keeping organization now. Look at how they have been able to keep Ukraine from turning hot. Russia is so tied into the financial system, they cannot afford to get in a fight with the West.

If you’re wondering where the “right side of history” lies, history seems to be saying it is bigger and bigger government. The argument against all of this is language, culture and genetics. That’s a good argument and we may have reached a natural limit of human organization. But that’s not the way to bet. A Paleolithic Steve Sailer probably thought human settlement or agriculture was a loser, too. The right side of history has always been bigger and bigger organizational units. The rise of nationalist parties in Europe could very well be a last gasp effort to resist the inevitable.

3 thoughts on “The Wrong Side of History

  1. Gotta disagree, particularly regarding Germany: the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) chiming in at 7% – during a low-turnout election, and for an otherwise stick-with-the-usual kind of orderly folk – is a remarkable watershed.

    Yes, remarkable. Yes, watershed.

    You’re correct as far as the loser Greeks go: they might as well be crying, “gimme mah EBT cards, you raaaacist!”, so one can reasonably discount their results.

    Don’t know about the Netherlands…I’ve heard conflicting results as to *why* Wilders’ Party didn’t do well; some chalk it up to his remarks about Madame LePen in France, even though she’s long and repeatedly renounced the bigotry of her dad.

    IN ANY CASE…NO WAY that this is just a ho-hum, nothing-to-see-here kind of election.

    The key will of course be the national elections, to see where e.g. UKIP stands in the Parliament or the AfD in the Bundestag.

    POPCORN!

  2. You are correct that the emergence of an anti-immigration vote in Europe is small beer in many ways, but it is a start. Low turn out maybe (in the UK the Euro elections never draw many people out on what turned out to be a wet night: traditionally Thursday wet evenings depress voting a lot in the British Isles), but it is a start nonetheless. With luck, the vote for UKIP had demonstrated to the ruling elite in Westminster that the people really don’t go along with the elite’s ‘do as we say not as we do’ policies as much as they thought.

    I have no idea, despite having voted UKIP, what they stand for in the long term but the evidence is they stand right now for more of what I think is best for the nation; as the the three ‘main’ parties in the UK are in lockstep over pro-Europe then it is valuable to remind them that not everyone loves Brussels as much as they do.

    Quite whether this develops into swing against European rule is another matter but we shall see. I am fond of saying that this country didn’t turn out the way my father and my grandfathers expected. They were prepared to die for Britain in WWII and I am sure had they and their fellows known how power would be eventually handed over without any consultation they may well have lain down their arms, but now it falls to those who remember to try to do what we can in any way we might. UKIP is one way.

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