"National Conservatives" like Vance and Hazony can sell this as "not blood and soil nationalism" to segments of the US population because they think America has never been hospitable to that version of nationalism...it's just a European thing. This historical ignorance is a necessary piece of this.
Hazony must be aware of the current revival of ancestry as a criterion for national membership, among the (western) European right.
Hazony's argument is that the US was founded as an "Anglo-Protestant" country, but one that "eventually" was able to "incorporate" others. First off, 18% of Americans in 1790 were enslaved, so that 95% number is odd. 2nd the Federalists wrote the Alien Enemies act in 1798, aimed at Irish Catholics.
It’s terrible history and also — as a descendent of Anglo-Protestant people who came to these shores in 1630 — even if their narrative were true, aren’t we allowed to have evolved? My ancestors might have had stupid ideas, but that doesn’t mean I have to.
Luckily ideas are not defined in our genes.
Exactly.
The "... or something" is shorthand for "this statistic is based on what I feel it should be."
Thanks for the gift article, Seth. I heard a clip of the podcast this morning on tik tok and was flabbergasted at Hazony's responses. Perhaps it was because of the clip, and therefore there was a lack of context.... I'll listen to the whole thing now and see if it changes my mind. 😁
I'm not saying Hazony is a fascist, but this talking point about the US being made "un-Christian" in the 1930s by hostile foreign elements is straight out of the US fascist playbook of that era. Those US fascists in the 1930s meant Jews, specifically Jews who they said were radical leftists.
This is also what nazi defenders say to avoid recognizing the role of Christianity in stoking 2000 years of anti-Semitism and the Christian Europeans doing the Holocaust "Actually the GOOD christians got purged so it couldn't have been us... The overwhelming majority of the population..."
Pretty sure folks like Jefferson & Franklin were Deists It’s not really what most Christians have in mind when they talk about Christianity
Hazony claims that the National Cons believe in pluralism and toleration, despite all of their actions to the contrary. He claims it's BECAUSE we're an Anglo-Protestant nation that the US can be so tolerant. It's the same claim from this apocryphal Patrick Henry quote, written by a 1950s fascist.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” is such a clear and beautiful statement. Whether natcons like it or not, each of us has the RIGHT to live as we see fit.
I wrote about that Hawley quote last summer. It's indicative of how the genealogy of today's National Conservatives traces back to a distinctively American fascist tradition, of which Hazony seems to be blissfully unaware. open.substack.com/pub/sethcotl...
This leads me to a question. What defines being a non-fascist conservative?
Yesterday, the official US Border Patrol FB page posted a winkingly eugenicist video riffing off of the Sydney Sweeney jeans/genes kerfuffle. Today that video is no longer posted there, which shows a surprising amount of either self-awareness or shame.
If you want to see that trollishly eugenicist video, it’s available here. www.tiktok.com/t/ZPHs1R655H...
FWIW, 1924 is when the KKK-backed and eugenics-informed Immigration Act was passed. It was the reopening of immigration in 1965 that Nat Cons like Hazony point to as the moment that "real America" began to be undermined, and which they seek to restore.
The comments on that FB post by the US Border Patrol made it clear that people 100% understood that they were talking about "genes," and not just "jeans." Remember when a certain Presidential candidate talked about immigrants "poisoning the blood" of our country? They knew what they were voting for.
I thought this piece on the Sydney Sweeney jeans thing was pretty good. It was obviously a eugenicist provocation meant to garner negative attention, though it was a profoundly lazy and stupid provocation. The fact that many just sloughed such vile shit off is alarming. bsky.app/profile/newy...
It was so very weird that Dunkin’ released a eugenicist ad almost simultaneously. Did they hire the same person to write them? The world may never know. Do know the guardian op ed tried to sanewash them both which was frustrating at best.
The word "loyal" appears dozens of times in the Hazony interview. Trump’s grandfather was famously disloyal to Bavaria, to the point of being deported for dodging the draft. That is actually normal—most Americans are here because of their ancestors’ lack of loyalty to their old countries and tribes.
it can't be racism or fascism or white supremacy or Nazism if there's a wink-wink involved, this is science
1920s was the time KKK immigrated to Canada to sell their anti-immigrant views
The soundtrack to that ICE video is about young men who are broken by vice. How fucking clueless are these people?
Very, very clueless.
I hope you are downloading your posts here and keeping it safe for when they inevitably come for this place. Such valuable work 🙏
The founders of your country would be amazed to be classified as Christians. People forget, or ignore that the Children of the Enlightenment were suspicious of religion ( for good reason, it turns out)
“America could have minorities as long as they weren’t visible and didn’t have rights and political power” is such a consistent historical mindset of these guys, with the mythic idea of this purported time receding and shifting as needed
I went to college with him. He was an extremist back then.
This is Judah Benjamin erasure, at least.
Shades of the “Cavuto mark”.
Also, Maryland was founded as a colony of English Catholics.
Hazony sounded patently ridiculous. Ezra did a good job of laying out the nonsense here.
After all, the USA really are sooo exceptional /s.