One of the reasons conservatives preach against identity politics is they believe it contradicts republican virtue. In a republic, people are supposed to be supremely loyal to the institutions of the republic. The men that hold office are not what matters, but rather, the office itself. You are supposed to respect the office, even if the man in the office is not respectable. This is why preventing low character people from holding office is important, as it diminishes the respect for the office.

Identity politics, in the conservative formulation, is tribalism and that means the tribe comes before everything else. A person who puts his tribe ahead of all else will sacrifice the office he holds or the political system itself, if it is good for his tribe. This is why conservatives moan about identity politics. They think it is un-American. They are not entirely wrong on this point. This is clear with the Jonathan Pollard case. His primary loyalty is to his people, so he spied for Israel.

For obvious reasons, conservatives will never use a case like this when moaning about the dangers of identity politics. Instead, they direct their anger at the white people who have been supporting them for decades but getting ruined as a result. Alternatively, they will gently chastise the Left for firing-up the blacks with fantastical claims about supernatural racism. They are not directing their wrath at the blacks, of course, but at the white people they say are responsible for it.

The Pollard case, however, is an excellent example of identity politics, both the positive and negative manifestations. Pollard claims that “If you’re outside Israel, then you live in a society in which you are basically considered unreliable.” This is a version of, “if they are going to call you a Nazi, you may as well be a Nazi.” In other words, Pollard believes Jews have no choice but to be unreliable and subversive in their hosts countries, because that is the role carved out for them.

This is a great example of negative identity. Pollard thinks all diaspora Jews are defined in their opposition to their host population. This means a big part of who they are is controlled by exogenous forces. If they are in Asia, then their anti-Asian attitudes will come to define them, but if they are in America, it is un-Americanisms. Pollard is defining diaspora Judaism in the same way Woody Allen defined it in the movie Zelig, in which the main character was nothing more than a chameleon.

On the other hand, Pollard points out that to be a Jew is to first and foremost have a loyalty to the tribe and to Israel. In fact, it is this loyalty to Israel that defines the Jew wherever he may find himself. This is a positive identity. Loyalty to Israel and maintaining the cultural habits of the Jewish people, no matter the environment, is what defines the Jewish person. If all the non-Jews died tomorrow and there were only Jews left on the planet, this would still control Jewish identity.

This duality to identity points out something important. If all non-Jews did die off, then that positive Jewish identity would quickly weaken. After all, loyalty to Israel would not mean much when there is no longer a threat to Israel or the Jewish people. Without some comparison and competition, this identity would grow weak. As those familiar with the Hebrew Bible know, the great threat to Israel was always internal. Those secondary identities are what come to dominate in such a condition.

On the other side of the coin, a strong identity turns negative when the group is surrounded by an alien identity. For example, Pollard’s casual assumption that Jews must be seen as unreliable by host populations. Therefore, being a good Jew means working to undermine the host population. What he is suggesting, at least in the case of Jews, is that being a minority population is unhealthy. A minority group with a strong group identity will inevitably become self-destructive.

This duality of group identity is why Europe, despite massive efforts to the contrary, maintains national identity. Net out the tens of millions of alien immigrants and the majority of native people are strong nationalist. The reason for this is Europeans are close enough to one another to notice the differences. There is plenty of competition between European people to maintain the group identity. It is why immigration is important to the European project. It dilutes nationalism.

In North America, identity in the form of nationalism never gained a strong purpose until the 20th century and that was largely artificial. What it means to be American was never a topic of conversation until the 20th century, because it never needed to be. Your local identity was much more important. Even racial identity was never strong, because blacks were small in number and never a real threat. This is why white identity never developed in North America. Non-whites were never competition.

All of this is quickly changing. The invasion from the south will intensify nationalist identity in Europe to the point where whites preaching against it will be laughed off the stage by white Europeans. The weakening of the European consensus is clear when you look at what is happening in ruling class politics. Here and there the view of immigrants and their role in Europe is changing. Denmark and France are two recent examples of where the consensus is starting to shift toward nationalism.

In America, the white population is so beaten down by decades of anti-white agitation that the recovery is much slower. Whites have been conditioned to never take any side, especially their own, but that is changing. The latent sense of identity is flowing into proxy issues like populism and gun ownership. These issues lack an explicit white identity, but they have a strong implicit one. They are white identity with training wheels and in time these will become more explicitly white issues.

The truth is like a body. No matter how well you try to hide it, it eventually turns up, usually at an unexpected time. Ethnic and racial identity are truths of the human condition, so they can never be forgotten, no matter how well buried. That is the truth of the Pollard case now floating to the surface. Identity is about trust. A people can only trust their own people. As racial and ethnic distance grows, the trust declines, which is why peaceful separation is the natural order of mankind.

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