Its official: multi-ethnic society a failure
Courtesy of Hellenic Nationalist I've just come accross this news that the Dutch government has declared multiculturalism 'a failure'. It seems to have been buried pretty effectively here in the UK, which is why I'm late in reporting it. The Telegraph states:
Holland's 30-year experiment in trying to create a tolerant, multicultural society has failed and led to ethnic ghettos and sink schools, according to an official parliamentary report.
The Netherlands' example as a successful, tolerant, multicultural community has taken a dent with the publication of a parliamentary report saying Dutch society is becoming increasingly polarised, with huge ethnic ghettos and subcultures tearing the country apart.
The report concludes that the attempt to create an integrated multi-ethnic society has failed. What is surprising is that most of the time these reports just brush over the obvious failures, while as this one not only sites the many failures, but virtually admits complete defeat. Its a complete reversal to the usual arrogant attitude of the liberals who cannot bring themselves to scrap their multi-cultural utopian dream. These liberals have really reaped what they have sown. I remember that Pim Fortuyn had stated that 'immigration, especially from Muslim countries, was diluting Dutch liberal values'. Well if the liberals love their immigration, and the immigrants couldn't care less about liberal values, what did they expect would happen? It shows you that liberal ideology is completely brain-dead and impervious to reality. Some of them are now throwing their arms into the air and openly lamenting the chaotic situation they've created. I blogged a couple of months backed about the Dutch (gay and self-declared “humanist”) author Oscar Van den Boogaard who said that, to him, coping with the islamization of Europe is like “a process of mourning.” He is overwhelmed by a “feeling of sadness.” “I am not a warrior,” he says, “but who is? I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.”
Meanwhile Trevor Phillips, chairman of the UK's Commission for Racial Equality, says the real enemy of integration is inequality: "The more we keep people unequal, the more they are likely to say, 'This society doesn't want us, it discriminates against us,' (and) they fall into the hands of extremists." The more we keep people unequal? What more does he want the natives to do, they're already second-class citizens in their own country. The only discrimination going on is 'positive discrimination' which is in favour of minorities.
posted by serbialives admin at 7:28 PM
32 Comments:
Forget about the english trying to save themselves from self-inflicted ghettos. They're toast.
What else can you expect from a "nation" of poofs, like the Dutch or the English?
They're only good as representatives of bad examples to not, to never model ousrselves on.
Oh nice. Very kind of you, I'm sure. Don't worry, I'm sure we'll survive not being imitated by you.
I dont think anyone said that we should be modelling ourselves on them, but I think if they fight back in whatever capacity they are able to then we should applaud them. Even if its a losing battle, its the right one, and thats all that matters.
But Nikola, it was ppl like the post-Second World War English and the Dutch and the French who pioneered multi-ethnic society. They are thus now reaping what they have sown. Greeks or Serbs did not tell them to invite the dregs of humanity to their shores after the Second World War, unfortunately the Greek elite who are jealous of the wealth in those countries want to build on their perverse models.
Maybe if the englishmen who fought on Normandy could become young again or come back to life they would fight against this, but time machines don't exist , and if they did and if those men where to go to see the brown and black England of today, they would never have fought in Normandy to bring on the current malaise that exists today.
I have a question. How does any of this sneering at the English help anyone? At all? Surely we should be uniting in our defense against the others rather than sniping at one another?
Just as its the elite that wants to force the mutlicultural model onto the Greeks now, it was the elites that forced it onto the English and Dutch. Granted, the English and Dutch populations gave less resistance, for a number of reasons. Not least because they were already more estranged from their spiritual heritage and then there was the colonial guilt issue. I can see Serbia and Greece being overwhelmed in the future but that wouldnt stop me fighting back. I agree that the fighters at Normandy would be turning in their graves looking at their nation today, but that doesnt mean that every Briton today is a degenerate to the last man. Like I said, the minority who resist may be fighting a losing battle, but I dont think it helps to call them a nation of poofs. A look back at their past shows that this state of affairs is not inherent or natural to them. You yourself have noted the degenerate state of Romans and Greeks in their pagan days. Thats not to say that either nation is inherently degenerate. Right now I feel sorrow for the state of Europe, but I'll back every man who will stand his ground and fight in each and every corner of this continent. Standing fast against the odds is a virtue.
Thats true that healthy nations do evolve. If one only looks at recent Greek history, meaning the last 100 years, there were several terrotories where the Greeks dealt with hostile minorities or were even the minority, when under Turkish occupation, yet fought to reverse their circumstances.
The English example is quite different bcs as you remarked the minority populations are often representative of England's far flung colonial empire. Whilst Greeks,in contrast, were and are subject to colonisation.
Make only quirk with cheering on those Englishmen with the strength to fight back and reverse the multi cultural society they live in , is in what way would it necessarily benefit us? On the one hand, yes, it would set an example , if it were to ever happen, that a country can fight back and perhaps succeed in reversing decades old policies of forced multi ethnic ghetto builiding by elites, yet the English even before their ghetto building ventures following the Second World War proved themselves enemies of the Greek people, their occupation of Cyprus dates back to 1878 , for example, an era when England was a society with strong "white racialism" as a basis of its many colonial exploitations around the globe, and Greeks themselves were not treated any better than any African or Far East Asian colony, so why should I feel empathy for the eventual or gradual or possible destruction of the English people, the only far fetched reason why I should feel any empathy towards their survival is if I entertained the flawed thesis of "white nationalism" or if I felt for them as "white brothers" , which i don't bcs they never acted toward my people as "brothers"
Thanks for your sympathy, Nikola, much appreciated.
HN, I know it can't be easy to get over old slights like the occupation of Cyprus, (and I'm sure there were others, too). But here's the thing: those English are dead and gone. I strongly suspect that most of the current lot have little or no connection to all that went before. We've had our heritage stolen from us, but perhaps that sets us free to some extent to start over and not make the same mistakes again.
I don't know, if you're so set on viewing the English as your eternal enemies, I suppose there's nothing can be done. A shame, really, it'd be better to have allies in this new bitter battle than have potential squandered by the nursing of old grudges.
Thats true that healthy nations do evolve. If one only looks at recent Greek history, meaning the last 100 years, there were several terrotories where the Greeks dealt with hostile minorities or were even the minority, when under Turkish occupation, yet fought to reverse their circumstances.
When I referred to healthy nations evolving I was not necessarily referring to peoples repelling an occupation. I think that some of the healthiest societies were just those that were under occupation. The suffering, combined with the contrast in their values to those of the oppressors, is something that almost forces a society to aim for more lofty spiritual goals. For instance the Serbian nation under the tyranny of the Turks was much more healthy than under today’s ‘free’ society. I was referring to spiritual health, more than physical freedom. In a sense, the worse things get and the more the native Europeans become occupied by alien peoples the greater will be their yearning for their own authentic heritage. We have an example of the Romans, a pagan people embracing Christianity from the heights of degeneracy. What more hope should we then have for peoples that were once Christian and produced Saints.
The English example is quite different bcs as you remarked the minority populations are often representative of England's far flung colonial empire. Whilst Greeks,in contrast, were and are subject to colonisation.
The minority populations are in many cases a result of colonial rule. But would you, as the result of crimes perpetrated by your aristocracy, consign your nation to the dust because of these injustices. The striving of every patriot has to be to preserve his own, not wallow in self-flagellation regarding past crimes committed by his rulers. Yes injustices must be righted and definitely not forgotten. But an injustice equally as great is being perpetrated in our days.
Make only quirk with cheering on those Englishmen with the strength to fight back and reverse the multi cultural society they live in , is in what way would it necessarily benefit us? On the one hand, yes, it would set an example , if it were to ever happen, that a country can fight back and perhaps succeed in reversing decades old policies of forced multi ethnic ghetto building by elites,
A precedent would be reason enough for me to support any fight back. But regardless of whether it would benefit us concretely I’ll support any such movement whether it be in Europe or native Indians in some corner of the Amazon rainforest. Each has a right to defend his own land and people. If you think I talk a lot about the English, its not that I’ve identified them as a hope or ally above all others. Its because I live here and have to live through the same problems, and I’m more familiar with the mechanisms of the n.w.o. in this part of the world. Also the fact that they are formerly Christian Europeans does, on the other hand, make them of more interest to me than a native Indian tribe.
mr smith, the issue of Cyprus is not simply a "slight"... hundreds of thousands of families were destroyed and ancestral homes were lost, countless Orthodox Christian holy places and shrines desecrated and destroyed, AND this is not *PAST TENSE* it is ongoing, why? What can you say or do about the 99 square miles of British bases , conveniently located for the British, in the Turk-occupied part of Cyprus TODAY. This is just one BIG example that is current , not just recent history, but ongoing.
I would like to see what you will do to address your people's current complicity and responsibility in the current and ongoing Genocide of my people, before I can even entertain the thought of seeing you or your people as brothers.
A precedent would be reason enough for me to support any fight back. But regardless of whether it would benefit us concretely I’ll support any such movement whether it be in Europe or native Indians in some corner of the Amazon rainforest. Each has a right to defend his own land and people. If you think I talk a lot about the English, its not that I’ve identified them as a hope or ally above all others. Its because I live here and have to live through the same problems, and I’m more familiar with the mechanisms of the n.w.o. in this part of the world. Also the fact that they are formerly Christian Europeans does, on the other hand, make them of more interest to me than a native Indian tribe.
The English are an amalgamation of Germanic tribes and French or Latin and some minute Roman influence. It's interesting that you would make such a sweeping statement about people defending their own lands and people. The question is how just a "people" can be in a claim for a particular land. For instance, who lay better claim to Palestine , if the oldest continual presence in that land was Greek orthodoxy, since its older than the native Muslim presence, and older that the recent Jewish Zionist presence, the Jews after the Roman dispersion were tiny in number, so naturally the oldest continual inhabitants should have the most just right to that land. What of Albanians in Kosovo? If an Albanian family has lived in Kosovo for two or three or four or more generations can it also by that definition claim a right to the land? What is the definition of native? The countriees of the West are artificial constructs and amalgamations of several large mostly germanic or latin tribes. BUT if the survivial of such peoples means a detriment to your own people, wouldn't it be wiser to hope for the eventual destruction of those people. The English have sailed around the world and in recent memory and current history have destroyed eitheir through complicity or collabaroation or outright direct terrorism have destroyed Serbian and Greek homelands. Would you absolve them bcs their elite cuased these occurences? Haven't they benefitted from the vast material wealth of their far flung colonial and neo-imperial realm? The cause of an Indian tribe striving to secede from the country of Bolivia or Brazil or Peru would be more worthy of my sympathy of a just cause than supporting the survival of the English if the English as a people are currently harming your own people.
The minority populations are in many cases a result of colonial rule. But would you, as the result of crimes perpetrated by your aristocracy, consign your nation to the dust because of these injustices. The striving of every patriot has to be to preserve his own, not wallow in self-flagellation regarding past crimes committed by his rulers. Yes injustices must be righted and definitely not forgotten. But an injustice equally as great is being perpetrated in our days.
If, hypothetically, the English righted what grave injustices they did to Greece , yes i would consider them differently, but I do not see any English movement of the kind, on the contrary. As far as Greece is concerned it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to feel guilty about, England's imperialism brought misery and instability and inspired immigration from Africa and Asia, as far as Greece is concerned we owe the Africans and the Asians ABSOLUTELY NOTHING bcs we never colonised them, the English people themsleves do bear at least a modicum of responsibility bcs again they benefitted immensely in wealth and power and luxury directly from the misery of all those colonies (Cyprus included) and by that I mean the average English person who enjoys a much higher standard of living than the average person in one of England's colonies--as a direct result of the aristocratic policy of colonisation.
When I referred to healthy nations evolving I was not necessarily referring to peoples repelling an occupation. I think that some of the healthiest societies were just those that were under occupation. The suffering, combined with the contrast in their values to those of the oppressors, is something that almost forces a society to aim for more lofty spiritual goals. For instance the Serbian nation under the tyranny of the Turks was much more healthy than under today’s ‘free’ society. I was referring to spiritual health, more than physical freedom. In a sense, the worse things get and the more the native Europeans become occupied by alien peoples the greater will be their yearning for their own authentic heritage. We have an example of the Romans, a pagan people embracing Christianity from the heights of degeneracy. What more hope should we then have for peoples that were once Christian and produced Saints.
In this regard I agree entirely that people like SERBS And Greeks can experience a growth in Nationalism if conditions of occupation radically worsen. AS for the English and other Western Europeans I am not sure bcs for the most part they have lived in heresy for many centuries bcs they long ago had the gift of Orthodoxy , but unlike Serbia and Greece they rejected it long ago for Roman Papist heresy or the heresy of the heresy called protestantism. And the many centuries of injustices by Western peoples to not only Serbia and Greece but people the world over is so great and has gone on for so many centuries they seem to be worse than even Turks in many regards insofar as bearing responsibility for evil Crimes Against Humanity throughout the ages..Can a people with such a long, long legacy of injustice and evil ever repent, truly reform and be saved?
If it hadn't have been for Churchill and the empire behind him you'd have been communist or dead and so would Greece so stop whining like a girl.
Nikola, some very good points. Thanks.
Hellenist, I think it perhaps comes back to this:
The cause of an Indian tribe striving to secede from the country of Bolivia or Brazil or Peru would be more worthy of my sympathy of a just cause than supporting the survival of the English if the English as a people are currently harming your own people.
If the English as a people were harming your own people, you'd have a point. As it is, though, the bases that you refer to today, the military actions etc, are not undertaken by the English as a people. In this country the very nationality of English is not recognised by the government, there is no England anymore, just '9 regions'. As a people, the English barely exist, still less can we make your life miserable 'as a people'.
If you've got a grievance against the actions of the UK govt and military (as it sounds like you have), then by all means rail against the British. But please don't make the mistake that so many others make and think we're one and the same. How, I wonder, would a Greek Cypriot feel about being described as Turkish, simply due to geographical proximity?
But either way, ill throw you a bone.
You write;
"I would like to see what you will do to address your people's current complicity and responsibility in the current and ongoing Genocide of my people, before I can even entertain the thought of seeing you or your people as brothers."
Well ages ago i made this post;
http://bnpandme.blogspot.com/2006/04/armenian-genocide-and-invasion-of.html
Perhaps if the nasty British wern't on Cyprus, your best mates the turks would come knocking? I mean its hardly like we have a fleet that needs global bases anymore. We don't even have fishing waters to call our own.
So you be careful what you wish for. You may think your tough stuff but if turkey wanted cyprus bad enough it would take it off you and all the crying about injustice you could muster wouldn't take it back off them. Perhaps we are still doing you a favour. God knows Churchill did.
Personally, I can see no reason why people -- and especially the victims of English imperialism -- should feel any sort of sympathy for the English and their current state of affairs.
First of all, they themselves are responsible for this mess. It's easy to blame the elites of any given time period but, the fact remains, these elites did not initiate a coup in order to bring their polices to fruition; they were brought to power by the English people. And, even if they weren't, the common Englishman did not overthrow them. Therefore, the common people, as well as the elites, bear responsibility, even if not in exactly the same way or amount for both their domestic situation and the English crimes against humanity. Moreover, if one studies English history and culture, one would realize that throughout English history, universalism has always been present and, more importantly, a core value of English society. This ideology was needed to unite all of the disparate peoples of the British Isles (i.e. ancient Britons, Anglo-Saxons, Romano-Britons, Danish-Vikings, Normans, Picts, Gaels, Cornish, Ulster-Scots, Flemish, numerous Celtic tribes, and many other peoples too numerous to exhaustively list) into an artificial "English" identity in the exact same fashion as universalism (in its multicultural form) is used today to unite all of the disparate peoples populating the United Kingdom into an artificial "British" identity. Nothing has changed. This is also why, even among contemporary English nationalist groups, "racial nationalism" is espoused rather than ethnic nationalism. With this in mind, one could argue that the English "nation" is following its natural social and historical evolution by continuing its long tradition of radical universalism.
Secondly, the unrepentant views of individuals such as "British National Party member", in regards to their past and ongoing crimes, reinforces the fact that the average Englishman on the street, despite the seemingly radical changes that have taken place in English/British society since the end of colonialism, has not lost his savage, imperialistic mindset of "by occupying, raping, murdering you and your country, we are in actuality helping you and your country". Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that, should the English tradition of universalism end and be replaced by a quasi-nationalist tradition, that they would behave no differently than they did in the past.
On the other hand, should the universalist tradition continue to progress, the English/British will very possibly destroy themselves due to the self-destructive nature of the said ideology and, in the process, will no longer be a threat to the world.
Oh no, lets be quite clear about this. If the people of cyprus wanted us to leave, If there was a referendum and they really did want us to go, then we should go.
Im just saying that i think we are doing you a favour. If you as a people think differently and its your island, we have no remit to be there.
Just remember this;
http://bnpandme.blogspot.com/2006/04/armenian-genocide-and-invasion-of.html
And don't come crying to us when islamic turkey decides not to play nice.
You know this reminds me of europe.
Gross simplification follows;
We were proud and strong but 2 world wars broke us. So America stepped in and kept the peace. In doing so it castrated the great men of europe, and is now despised by most. Yet without America we would surely have been overrun.
It could be seen as similar, with Britain taking Americas role and Greece/cyprus taking europe.
"This is also why, even among contemporary English nationalist groups, "racial nationalism" is espoused rather than ethnic nationalism."
But racial and ethnic are the same, surely? Perhaps you mean civic rather than ethnic nationalism? Civic nationalism is the sort espoused by suchlike as the Campaign for an English parliament and so on, where 'English' just means 'people who like to think they're English' and is open to people of all races and ethnicities.
To criticise them for this, though, is both accurate and slightly silly. While they're certainly defeating the purpose in this, I don't see any way they could do otherwise without being banned, imprisoned, and made such pariahs that 'English' would be a term of abuse up there with 'Nazi' and 'fascist'.
Hellenic Nationalist:
The English are an amalgamation of Germanic tribes and French or Latin and some minute Roman influence. It's interesting that you would make such a sweeping statement about people defending their own lands and people. The question is how just a "people" can be in a claim for a particular land. For instance, who lay better claim to Palestine , if the oldest continual presence in that land was Greek orthodoxy, since its older than the native Muslim presence, and older that the recent Jewish Zionist presence, the Jews after the Roman dispersion were tiny in number, so naturally the oldest continual inhabitants should have the most just right to that land.
You answered your own question. That is, the oldest continual inhabitants should have the most right to the land.
What of Albanians in Kosovo? If an Albanian family has lived in Kosovo for two or three or four or more generations can it also by that definition claim a right to the land? What is the definition of native?
Oldest continual inhabitants. I had a discussion with bganon about the definition of native/indigenous a while back (http://serbialives.blogspot.com/2006/12/discussion-on-race-culture-religion.html).
The countriees of the West are artificial constructs and amalgamations of several large mostly germanic or latin tribes. BUT if the survivial of such peoples means a detriment to your own people, wouldn't it be wiser to hope for the eventual destruction of those people.
First of all, if the present situation continues the result will be much more negative than if the English were to survive. Were these islands to become the mish-mash that multiculturalists want them to become, it would leave a mass of mongrel people who were even more prone to be used by the globalists. You imply that a globalist victory would be a more positive impact for the Serbian people than a globalist defeat. You are asking me to be indifferent as the whole of Europe succumbs to the globalist agenda, in the hope that the downfall of various European nations will be of benefit to Serbia. But that would be to ignore the massive melting pot that would be surrounding Serbia.
The English have sailed around the world and in recent memory and current history have destroyed eitheir through complicity or collabaroation or outright direct terrorism have destroyed Serbian and Greek homelands. Would you absolve them bcs their elite cuased these occurences?
No I wouldn’t absolve them. But if I had to choose between their current elite being deposed, or the current elite achieving victory, I know which I’d rather have.
If, hypothetically, the English righted what grave injustices they did to Greece , yes i would consider them differently, but I do not see any English movement of the kind, on the contrary. As far as Greece is concerned it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to feel guilty about,
Noone suggested that Greece has anything to be guilty about.
In this regard I agree entirely that people like SERBS And Greeks can experience a growth in Nationalism if conditions of occupation radically worsen. AS for the English and other Western Europeans I am not sure bcs for the most part they have lived in heresy for many centuries bcs they long ago had the gift of Orthodoxy , but unlike Serbia and Greece they rejected it long ago for Roman Papist heresy or the heresy of the heresy called protestantism. And the many centuries of injustices by Western peoples to not only Serbia and Greece but people the world over is so great and has gone on for so many centuries they seem to be worse than even Turks in many regards insofar as bearing responsibility for evil Crimes Against Humanity throughout the ages..Can a people with such a long, long legacy of injustice and evil ever repent, truly reform and be saved?
Anything is possible. But you’re asking me to become a cheerleader for the destruction of a people. Whether the English survive or not there will be a state on these islands. Now that state will either be under the control of the globalists, or it wont. Im more inclined to believe that a mish-mash would have no other desire or option, whereas a nationalist one would at least provide the prospect of resistance and a healthy ideology. To believe that the eradication of the English as a people would be beneficial would be to ignore the inevitably multi-cultural state that would remain, and the purposes for which it could be used. That would be if we were to be viewing things purely from what is personally beneficial to ourselves, which in itself is, at least to me, limited. I have nothing to gain from an Indian tribe securing its survival, but it still strikes me as a noble and just cause.
Hellenian:
Personally, I can see no reason why people -- and especially the victims of English imperialism -- should feel any sort of sympathy for the English and their current state of affairs.
First of all, they themselves are responsible for this mess. It's easy to blame the elites of any given time period but, the fact remains, these elites did not initiate a coup in order to bring their polices to fruition; they were brought to power by the English people. And, even if they weren't, the common Englishman did not overthrow them. Therefore, the common people, as well as the elites, bear responsibility, even if not in exactly the same way or amount for both their domestic situation and the English crimes against humanity.
Elites would indeed be unable to act with impunity if they were not at least tolerated by a proportion of the population. But we know that subversive means and coups have been used. The French revolution, for example, was effectively a coup which furthered the secular agenda of the financiers who backed it.
Moreover, if one studies English history and culture, one would realize that throughout English history, universalism has always been present and, more importantly, a core value of English society. This ideology was needed to unite all of the disparate peoples of the British Isles (i.e. ancient Britons, Anglo-Saxons, Romano-Britons, Danish-Vikings, Normans, Picts, Gaels, Cornish, Ulster-Scots, Flemish, numerous Celtic tribes, and many other peoples too numerous to exhaustively list) into an artificial "English" identity in the exact same fashion as universalism (in its multicultural form) is used today to unite all of the disparate peoples populating the United Kingdom into an artificial "British" identity. Nothing has changed. This is also why, even among contemporary English nationalist groups, "racial nationalism" is espoused rather than ethnic nationalism. With this in mind, one could argue that the English "nation" is following its natural social and historical evolution by continuing its long tradition of radical universalism.
If universalism were, as you have defined it, the uniting of various tribes to form a nation, then there is scarcely a country that is not universalist by your standards. The tribes you mention were largely very closely related both racially and culturally. I would hardly describe the mish-mashing with Africans and Asians as continuing a long tradition. Moreover there are many other nations that may not be able to exhaustively list all the tribes which originally contributed to the gene pool (and may try and pass themselves off as pure), but does this make the present nation any less viable. The Serbian nation, for example, originally incorporated the Old European tribes from pre-Slavic times, peoples from the Roman times, Germanic and Greek peoples from the Byzantine era, alongside the core Slavic component.
Secondly, the unrepentant views of individuals such as "British National Party member", in regards to their past and ongoing crimes, reinforces the fact that the average Englishman on the street, despite the seemingly radical changes that have taken place in English/British society since the end of colonialism, has not lost his savage, imperialistic mindset of "by occupying, raping, murdering you and your country, we are in actuality helping you and your country".
Listen, I am in full agreement with you as regards Cyprus. But here you have an opportunity to explain the true situation and instead you just complain about other peoples mindsets. The average man on the street is extremely ignorant, but I wouldn’t call him savage. If he knew the true situation I doubt very much that he would call rape and murder a help. I meet many people that think that the British did something noble in Bosnia and Kosovo. But what helps most? To explain to them the reality and bring them onside, or to denounce them as irredeamable and savage rapists and murderers? In this particular case, Im sure that, were you to explain the reality, BNP member would agree with you. Yet instead you miss the opportunity to enlighten people in exchange for merely levelling hostile character traits.
Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that, should the English tradition of universalism end and be replaced by a quasi-nationalist tradition, that they would behave no differently than they did in the past.
If the current order was overthrown I think that any nationalists would be niether inclined nor able to undertake a policy of imperialism in any shape or form. For one I don’t think that nationalists would want to contribute to the various global escapades of the n.w.o. Secondly any unilateral imperialist agenda would not be viable given the state of world geopolitics, and the fact that year in year out the British economy is dropping as a proportion of the world economy as a whole. The disparate economic might which enabled an empire has been long gone. The only current imperialism is taking place under the auspices of the US. As I have pointed out, the eradication of the English, or indeed all the native peoples, would hardly stop the resulting entity from continuing to collaborate with the US. If anything collaboration and subservience would be even more definite.
On the other hand, should the universalist tradition continue to progress, the English/British will very possibly destroy themselves due to the self-destructive nature of the said ideology and, in the process, will no longer be a threat to the world.
As I asked HN, do you think that the mongrel mass that replaced them would be a benign entity with a positive impact on the world?
I had about the best state schooling available in England and read English at Oxford, and yet I was overwhelmingly ignorant of pre-1914 Balkan history - even the most basic dates and facts about the Ottoman invasion and occupation of Europe. As a student during the '90s, I had absolutely no historical or cultural perspective on what was happening in Serbia and parts adjacent. And I was not alone - I was actually better informed than most of the British public, just for being able to identify the Balkan nations on a map and having a general idea of the WW1 and WW2 campaigns there. Most Brits barely know any useful amount of their own history, let alone the rest of Europe. This must seem shockingly alien to you. It sickens and ashames me as an Englishman.
When I started reading on post-Classical Greek history and the wider history of independence struggles against Ottoman rule, I was amazed and horrified - and disgusted at the countless failures of Britain and most of the other great powers of Europe to do the right thing for Western civilisation and put an end to the obscene Islamic empire on European soil. I do my best to enlighten as many other Brits and other ignorant North-Westerly Europeans as I possibly can - and, believe me, once they know, their opinions change...
There have always been individual Englishmen (and all manner of other Europeans), acting privately or outside their authority, who have done the right thing by Greece out of personal conviction and common cultural identification with the great Greek legacy on which our civilisation is built. Many of them died for Greece and for Europe on Greek soil in the War of Independence. Most significantly, remember Admiral Sir Edward Codrington GCB and what he did at Navarino - and how he was popularly applauded for it in Britain...whilst being hated by the political class.
And I understand that in this country, we will either learn the hard lessons Balkan Europeans learned centuries ago or we will perish.
I think Phil Hellene may have made the best points yet. Oddly, Phil, your comments about Sir Edward Codrington, remind me greatly of a book recommended me by a commenter on my own blog a few weeks back. I leave a link here that it may benefit others. Do go read The Flying Inn.
British National Party member:
Oh no, lets be quite clear about this. If the people of cyprus wanted us to leave, If there was a referendum and they really did want us to go, then we should go.
A referendum is not necessary since you, as English, are foreigners and as such have absolutely no right or justification to be in Cyprus (or in any non-Anglo Saxon country) in the first place. This should not only be directed to your military but should also extend to expatriate Englishmen who have taken up residence in Greece/Cyprus and to English tourists. The English, along with all other Westerners, should not be allowed to enter our lands as all Westerners bring with them is immense suffering (during occupation and wartime) and immense degeneracy (during peacetime) to native populations. No distinction should be made between military men or tourists since both are equally destructive, albeit in different ways.
Im just saying that i think we are doing you a favour.
That's what imperialists think: that slavery, rape, and murder are all benevolent favors.
And don't come crying to us when islamic turkey decides not to play nice.
There's that imperialistic mindset again. The notion that other countries need you so greatly that they'd fall apart without your "selfless" help. And not only that but, after falling apart, they'd run back to you, crying and begging for help!
This may surprise you but England has betrayed Greece so many times over the last few centuries that to come to you and accept your "help" would be exponentially more disastrous than being on our own. (And, despite what you may believe, countries can manage without foreign interference.)
MrSmith:
But racial and ethnic are the same, surely? Perhaps you mean civic rather than ethnic nationalism? Civic nationalism is the sort espoused by suchlike as the Campaign for an English parliament and so on, where 'English' just means 'people who like to think they're English' and is open to people of all races and ethnicities.
No, I did not mean civic. And "racial" and "ethnic" are not the same thing. "Racial" is defined as "of, pertaining to, or characteristic of one race or the races of humankind" while "ethnic" is defined as "pertaining to or characteristic of a people, esp. a group (ethnic group) sharing a common and distinctive culture, religion, language, or the like". In other words, I was contrasting racial sentiments with cultural sentiments and demonstrating that English nationalists, true to their universalist tradition, espouse racialism instead of a true cultural nationalism.
Nikola:
If universalism were, as you have defined it, the uniting of various tribes to form a nation, then there is scarcely a country that is not universalist by your standards.
I never said, or implied, that the uniting of various tribes to form a nation is an example of universalism. I wrote that the ancestors of today's Englishmen formulated and employed an ideology of universalism to unite the disparate ethnic groups that had been forcefully subjugated. In other words, what happened in the British Isles was an artificial version of what happens naturally to form a nation.
The tribes you mention were largely very closely related both racially and culturally.
If that were the case, it would not explain the linguistic differences between some of those ethnic groups nor the fact that some of those ethnic groups (e.g. the Scottish, Welsh, and Cornish), to this very day, do not identify as English and want to secede from the United Kingdom to form their own nations.
I would hardly describe the mish-mashing with Africans and Asians as continuing a long tradition.
Considering that the English came about artificially and through a policy of uniting disparate ethnic groups and tribes, the jump to extending this policy to other races is not so great. In truth, the merger of the white and yellow races is not as rare as one might think. Russians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Turks, Finns, and Filipinos are a few examples of peoples who represent this phenomenon to one degree or another.
The average man on the street is extremely ignorant, but I wouldn’t call him savage. If he knew the true situation I doubt very much that he would call rape and murder a help. I meet many people that think that the British did something noble in Bosnia and Kosovo. But what helps most? To explain to them the reality and bring them onside, or to denounce them as irredeamable and savage rapists and murderers?
I am of the view that Westerners are irredeemable and are doomed to forever be barbarians. It's true, every now and then, you find a Westerner who is not only a decent person but is even so enlightened as to reject his people's negative sociopolitical developments and contributions to the world (e.g. the French Revolution, the so-called "Enlightenment", etc.) and to accept Orthodoxy. However, to say that this is a minority is an overstatement; the amount of enlightened Westerners is so minuscule as to classify this phenomenon as an exception to the general rule. The reason that I believe Westerners to be incapable of enlightenment is not only because I have personally observed and studied Westerners firsthand but, more importantly, because of what history has shown me. These were, after all, a people who were blessed with Orthodoxy and then fell into heresy and all of the consequences that followed that. Only a barbarian would have been capable of rejecting the truth for falsehood.
If the current order was overthrown I think that any nationalists would be niether inclined nor able to undertake a policy of imperialism in any shape or form. For one I don’t think that nationalists would want to contribute to the various global escapades of the n.w.o.
True, they probably wouldn't want to contribute to that and I agree that, in the short term, they wouldn't embark on any imperialist adventures. But what about the long-term? Considering how strongly the imperialist tradition is rooted in the mind of the Englishman, who looks back to the days of colonialism with nostalgic longing and pride, it would only be a matter of time before he returned to his old ways of terror and conquest. Perhaps not in exactly the same fashion as before, but a return nonetheless.
Secondly any unilateral imperialist agenda would not be viable given the state of world geopolitics, and the fact that year in year out the British economy is dropping as a proportion of the world economy as a whole. The disparate economic might which enabled an empire has been long gone. The only current imperialism is taking place under the auspices of the US.
Contemporary imperialism may not be as overt as sailing one's battleships to a foreign land and making that land a dependency, but imperialism still exists to this day and is still widely practiced by Western states. In any case, this isn't just about imperialism, this is about any crimes that could be committed by England (and other Western countries).
As I have pointed out, the eradication of the English, or indeed all the native peoples, would hardly stop the resulting entity from continuing to collaborate with the US. If anything collaboration and subservience would be even more definite.
Theoretically, yes, but the fact of the matter is that the necessary conditions that would lead to such massive destruction would leave the entire country -- regardless of whose hands it was in -- weak and powerless. That's the ultimate objective: for Britain to not have the power to oppress and control other countries.
As I asked HN, do you think that the mongrel mass that replaced them would be a benign entity with a positive impact on the world?
When I said that universalism would destroy the English/British, I meant that the entire country would fall apart. Not that a mongrel mass would necessarily triumph. And, even if it did, who can say which direction it would go in? If Muslims took over the United Kingdom, do you really believe they would pursue multiculturalism, for example, when it would be detrimental to their cause?
To be brutally honest, I despise the English so much, I hope that they end up becoming like Sudan, intercine civil warfare, and an almost non-existant state, reacheable only by way of a post office box.
I agree with Hellenian that tourists from England should be banned from our homelands and from buying lands, I knew Greek Cypriots that would indiscriminately just smash beer bottles on the heads of Englishmen and even beat a group of drunken Englishmen with tree roots (Sounds like great fun).The English should all melt into that mongrel mass they are creating in the North Seas and hopefully sink. Whats one more mongrel mass ? A more "nigger-ized", would actually be great, they're far enough from our homelands , so F-them!
Tell you what, HN, by this stage the feeling's getting to be pretty mutual. Not against all Greeks, of course, just you.
"To be brutally honest, I despise the English so much, I hope that they end up becoming like Sudan, intercine civil warfare, and an almost non-existant state, reacheable only by way of a post office box."
By that stage , you will follow the armenians in experincing yet another muslim-inflicted genocide .
The Greeks are almost extinct in what is now called Turkey , and believe me the caliphate fans want Greece to be next on their cleansing list .
Hating other christians will only lead you to oblivion .
Hellenian:
I never said, or implied, that the uniting of various tribes to form a nation is an example of universalism. I wrote that the ancestors of today's Englishmen formulated and employed an ideology of universalism to unite the disparate ethnic groups that had been forcefully subjugated. In other words, what happened in the British Isles was an artificial version of what happens naturally to form a nation.
I’m finding it rather difficult to follow you since I have never heard the term universalist applied in terms of nation forming. If I understand you correctly, you accept the uniting of various tribes is necessary in order to form a nation, but you consider it to have been artificial in the English case. I don’t think the tribes involved were that disparate at all. It’s certainly comparable to other invaders who assimilated all over Europe.
If that were the case, it would not explain the linguistic differences between some of those ethnic groups nor the fact that some of those ethnic groups (e.g. the Scottish, Welsh, and Cornish), to this very day, do not identify as English and want to secede from the United Kingdom to form their own nations.
In terms of linguistic differences, Scottish is not a dialect, but an accent. Welsh and Cornish are both remnants of the Celtic Britons on these islands, before the Germanic invasions. Scottish tribes such as the Picts did indeed have their own Celtic dialect in the past. The list you provided earlier (ancient Britons, Anglo-Saxons, Romano-Britons, Danish-Vikings, Normans, Picts, Gaels, Cornish, Ulster-Scots, Flemish, numerous Celtic tribes) can be effectively seperated into 2 main groups. There are the original Celtic tribes such as the Manx, Picts, Welsh tribes, Cornish tribes etc. Then there are the Germanic tribes that invaded such as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. An analogy could be drawn between the Slavic settlement of the Balkans and the incorporation of Old European elements into the Slavic core. Most geographical territory in Europe has had such population movements. I don’t think the difference between Celtic and Germanic Indo-Europeans was that great at all. If such differences were a cause to undermine nations today, you could make a similar case for Serbia as you have for England. Not to mention other nations.
Considering that the English came about artificially and through a policy of uniting disparate ethnic groups and tribes, the jump to extending this policy to other races is not so great.
Everything is relative. But you cannot compare the difference between Germanic and Celtic tribes with the difference between those tribes and Africans and Asians. There is no comparison in terms of genetics, linguistics or culture and the jump is huge, it’s about as big as it can get.
I am of the view that Westerners are irredeemable and are doomed to forever be barbarians.
I am not of that view. It does not look good for Westerners on the whole, but anything is possible. On an individual basis I know for sure that there are many who are reasonable and truth seeking. Blanket attacks on their character, drawn from comments which have been made on an ignorance of the full facts is counter-productive. I consider Westerners to be in an extremely bad state. And I will not help others to the detriment of my own people and faith. But I just don’t see that helping them is at all detrimental to Serbia or Orthodoxy. In the end you can only do good by others and everything else is in Gods hands. Of course this does not include assisting or apologising for those actively engaged in a battle against my people. But I have spared no words with regards Western states. But I do stop at characterising every individual as irredeemable and doomed.
It's true, every now and then, you find a Westerner who is not only a decent person but is even so enlightened as to reject his people's negative sociopolitical developments and contributions to the world (e.g. the French Revolution, the so-called "Enlightenment", etc.) and to accept Orthodoxy.
No matter how rare it may be, I believe everybody should be given a chance.
However, to say that this is a minority is an overstatement; the amount of enlightened Westerners is so minuscule as to classify this phenomenon as an exception to the general rule.
You interchange enlightened Westerners with decent Westerners. While the number of enlightened ones may indeed be small, the number of decent ones is more substantial. And these decent ones are all individuals that could potentially be ‘enlightened’ as you put it. Therefore I consider it more productive to give people the benefit of the doubt and attempt to establish a useful dialogue, than to launch into denunciations. You jumped on someone’s ignorance on the issue of Cyprus and immediately accused them of having a savage mindset. People can be honestly mistaken. Your quickness to accuse him of having a savage mindset is similar to those that accuse me of hate because it means that they don’t have to examine the other alternatives.
The reason that I believe Westerners to be incapable of enlightenment is not only because I have personally observed and studied Westerners firsthand but, more importantly, because of what history has shown me.
You have already acknowledged that there are enlightened Westerners, therefore I can only assume that you consider the West as a whole incapable of becoming enlightened. I’m inclined to think that may be the case. But I don’t think that the righteousness of the battle can be judged by the outcome. In this case we can’t even be sure of the outcome. In the end I can only do so much. I am on my own journey, I don’t claim to have all the answers. But I’m pretty sure that I have some, and that I can help others on an individual level. I’ll approach every fellow man with an open mind, and I definitely won’t make judgements about whether they’re irredeemable or not. In the end you can only do your best. I don’t think making negative assumptions is useful or desirable. Furthermore if one is already enlightened it strikes me as a slightly unnatural state to be so unwilling to guide or enlighten others on certain issues on the basis that you judge them to be barbarians.
These were, after all, a people who were blessed with Orthodoxy and then fell into heresy and all of the consequences that followed that. Only a barbarian would have been capable of rejecting the truth for falsehood.
No one can know Gods plan for mankind. In terms of individuals, we have martyrs that became apostates after being blessed with Orthodoxy. They then repented and laid down their lives in an effort to redeem themselves. Admittedly, you speak of nations. But there is no reason why the same thing cannot happen with nations. Yes the trials and self-inflicted punishments are likely to be grave, but who is to say that a nation cannot again be purified and redeemed. The Church itself certainly does not take a default position that Western Europe is beyond help and that as a result there should be absolutely no missionary work or effort, that it should just be abandoned. Just the opposite infact. And I have personally been to the parish of an English priest. This priest made his own journey to Orthodoxy. He now tends to a flock and his Church is filled with icons, not just of Eastern Orthodox Saints, but also some of the Saints of Old England, such as St.Edmund the martyr.
While the level of estrangement to the faith is not so great at all in comparison with the West, it is not an exaggeration to say that Serbs or Russians fell away from the faith, especially during their communist times (and before those times to a certain extent). The punishment which I believe we Serbs are now receiving is, I believe, directly related to this. But we may just emerge from the current gloomy state of affairs purified. St.Nikolaj himself predicted that the results of apostasy would be severe, but he did not predict that there was no hope. He himself spent time in England befriending people in the CofE, who he could only define as heretics, not to justify or approve of their heresy, but to help and guide. Just to make clear, he was absolutely against ecumenism, you cant compromise on what you believe to be the truth. But that didn’t in his eyes mean that he shouldn’t communicate with those he considered heretics. And it certainly didn’t mean that they were beyond hope.
True, they probably wouldn't want to contribute to that and I agree that, in the short term, they wouldn't embark on any imperialist adventures. But what about the long-term?
In the long term I think its clear that Britain will never be a super-power again. And the likelihood of global adventures is less, not more, if the elite is removed.
Contemporary imperialism may not be as overt as sailing one's battleships to a foreign land and making that land a dependency, but imperialism still exists to this day and is still widely practiced by Western states. In any case, this isn't just about imperialism, this is about any crimes that could be committed by England (and other Western countries).
There is such a thing as economic and cultural imperialism, it is true. It is certainly not necessary to have a physical presence. I just don’t see why the destruction of the English would guarantee that no such imperialism emanated from these shores. Neither do I agree that a Britain, with its current elite (subservient to the n.w.o.) deposed, would be more likely to engage in such imperialism. Like I said earlier, it is much less likely, not more likely. Right now we have the British state contributing military forces to n.w.o. escapades. We have multi-national companies here that try and corner and exploit economic markets the world over. We have the attempt to impose ‘democratic’ regimes. And then there is the cultural propaganda with which the rest of the world is saturated via the media (more of a sub-culture than anything else). Now this is all likely to continue under the present regime. This is why, as I said in response to HN, I’ll support any person or group that fights against the current regime. I think it’s in the interests of the indigenous population, and the interests of the rest of Europe.
Theoretically, yes, but the fact of the matter is that the necessary conditions that would lead to such massive destruction would leave the entire country -- regardless of whose hands it was in -- weak and powerless. That's the ultimate objective: for Britain to not have the power to oppress and control other countries.
Right now the British state is assisting the oppression and control of other countries. Right now I want the elite removed by people who have some semblance of a healthy ideology. If you think the resultant state would be more prone to commit injustices than the current one then that’s your call.
When I said that universalism would destroy the English/British, I meant that the entire country would fall apart. Not that a mongrel mass would necessarily triumph. And, even if it did, who can say which direction it would go in? If Muslims took over the United Kingdom, do you really believe they would pursue multiculturalism, for example, when it would be detrimental to their cause?
I don’t have that much of a one track mind over multiculturalism. Clearly Muslims would not pursue such a policy, and clearly that scenario would be just as bad as a multicultural cesspit.
Hellenic Nationalist:
To be brutally honest, I despise the English so much, I hope that they end up becoming like Sudan, intercine civil warfare, and an almost non-existant state, reacheable only by way of a post office box. agree with Hellenian that tourists from England should be banned from our homelands and from buying lands, I knew Greek Cypriots that would indiscriminately just smash beer bottles on the heads of Englishmen and even beat a group of drunken Englishmen with tree roots (Sounds like great fun).The English should all melt into that mongrel mass they are creating in the North Seas and hopefully sink. Whats one more mongrel mass ? A more "nigger-ized", would actually be great, they're far enough from our homelands , so F-them!
I respect honesty, so now let me be brutally honest with you. You know I read your blog, so if you want to bring up discussions such as this, make it on your blog. I don’t appreciate you trying to start a flame war on here with people you are aware I link to. Your comments have been inflammatory from the start. However you feel about the English I consider it a lack of respect towards me personally that you would try and create this kind of atmosphere on my blog. I have not gone on to your blog and insulted Iranians and wished them malice even though you link to an Iranian. Personally I don’t wish them ill, neither did I have to restrain myself from insulting them because I never felt compelled to in the first place. But I’m sure you can see the analogy. I respect your call to view him as an ally or at least as someone with whom you share some common views. I’d appreciate it if you respected my judgement. Restraint and calmness are Christian virtues. The lack of both on your behalf is disappointing and it is sad to see that your contribution culminates in describing the smashing of bottles over peoples heads as great fun. A huge amount of Brits behave in a reprehensively degenerate way all over the beach resorts of southern Europe, but your idea of fun is just as distasteful. All this does is just completely undermine anything useful and insightful you may have posted on your blog which a bystander might see.
First, allow me to apologise if I caused you distress and/or insulted you personally, that was not my intention, Nikola, and i respect you as a fellow Orthodox Christian and ,likewise, I try to honor all genuine Orthdox Christians, especially Serbs, as brothers.
As to the Englishmen invading Cyprus year after year since 1878, eitheir as military chauvinists or touristic chauvinists, I still stand by my brothers in Cyprus, who have seen close to fifthy percent of their, or OUR,island decimated and desecrated and destroyed under the watchful eyes and able assistance of 'great' britian. There is a natural and justifiable 'hatred' for lack of a better word of the english bcs of this, and englishmen themsleves should , if they were good christians, look to the root cause of why this 'hatred' exists. And I am sorry, Nikola, but the actions of a few hotheaded greek youth towards the hordes who descend upon their homeland to openly fornicate and use their homeland as a public urinal in their 'holidays in the sun' is of immensley greater evil and shows the lack of inconsideration for the rest of humanity which manifests itself in the behavoir of not only the active English imperialists, past and present, but also in the massive disrespct shown by your average englishman who even goes as far as to kill out of spite. So, no, the actions of those few Greek victims who have a Government and a state that does not stop this abomination and an elite that is in collabaoration with this abomination is simply a small expression of resistance on behalf of those Greek youths who cannot take it anymore, and have chosen active resistance, in the tradition of others in the past such as the heroic EOKA resistance which took up arms and attacked the british Empire's hold on Cyprus in the 1950s -1970s , by targetting both military and civilian targets of the Britsh/English occupation of our homeland, as to wether or not this was an un-Christian practice of not showing restraint and clam is simply a question of degree.
True, I do link to foreigners on my blog-an iranian, a Mexican, an American based historical institute, and even an Englishman(David Irving)--if you or anyone else came to my blog and attacked any or all of those nationalisites I would publish the comments, I have a personal policy of publishing any comments which do not try to give out info on me or my relatives or do not contain outright anti-Christian blasphemy--I would let it stand and let those people defend themselves. And if it came down , hypothetically, to a fight between , lets say an American and YOU (my genuine Orthodox Christian brother) I would always stand by your side. My loyalty is not to the place where i happened to be born and live and the many degnerates who populate that place (America), my loyalty is to Greece (my true Fatherland) and to genuine Orthodox Christians (like the Serbs)
I’m finding it rather difficult to follow you since I have never heard the term universalist applied in terms of nation forming.
Well, if you understand the concept of universality (i.e., "relation, extension, or applicability to all") then its application to nation-forming shouldn't be very difficult to follow.
If I understand you correctly, you accept the uniting of various tribes is necessary in order to form a nation, but you consider it to have been artificial in the English case.
No, it's not absolutely necessary but, given how often it has occured in history, it is a natural process. However, due to some factors, the formation of the English identity was about as natural as the formation of the American identity. In other words, it was artificial and invented rather than natural and organic.
I don’t think the tribes involved were that disparate at all. It’s certainly comparable to other invaders who assimilated all over Europe.
I disagree. It is mostly comparable to Western Europe (rather than Europe as a whole) where almost every single people are of at least partial Germanic stock. However, I wouldn't say that the case of Western Europe can be extrapolated to the rest of the world since it is unique in some ways.
In terms of linguistic differences, Scottish is not a dialect, but an accent. Welsh and Cornish are both remnants of the Celtic Britons on these islands, before the Germanic invasions.
When I cited Scottish, Welsh, and Cornish I was mainly referring to the fact these peoples don't identify as English and, to various extents, have ambitions of seccession. However, even in terms of linguistic differences, some scholars regard Scots as a distinct Germanic language. Standard Scottish English is, as you say, an accent but I am not talking about that.
An analogy could be drawn between the Slavic settlement of the Balkans and the incorporation of Old European elements into the Slavic core. Most geographical territory in Europe has had such population movements.
The problem with that analogy is that those population movements resulted in assimilations and/or expulsions of peoples with the end result that new ethnic identities were formed. In the English case, various ethnic groups and tribes were simply subjugated by others but never fully assimilated with the result that, to this day, there are peoples in the British Isles who have lost their native languages and much of their cultures but still refuse to self-identify as English despite those things.
Let me make an analogy to you now: Alexander the Great conquered much of the East, creating a vast empire where the Greek language and Hellenic culture dominated all others (with the result that a Hellenistic culture was formed), and began a policy of having his soldiers mix with the native populations in order to unite them. Now, despite the fact that, at that time, most of the people spoke Greek (along with their native tongues) and were directly affected by Hellenic culture, no one would seriously claim that they are Greek today. This is similar to what happened in the British Isles.
I don’t think the difference between Celtic and Germanic Indo-Europeans was that great at all. If such differences were a cause to undermine nations today, you could make a similar case for Serbia as you have for England. Not to mention other nations.
That's irrelevant because, by that logic, since Serbs, Croatians, and Slovenes are all closely related racially, one might argue that they are one ethnic group. However, the Great Powers' role in uniting these separate ethnic groups proved disastrous because, despite racial and linguistic similarities, each group was unique and had its own national identity. The same applies to any similarities that may exist between Celts and Germanics.
Everything is relative. But you cannot compare the difference between Germanic and Celtic tribes with the difference between those tribes and Africans and Asians. There is no comparison in terms of genetics, linguistics or culture and the jump is huge, it’s about as big as it can get.
When the fathers of Liberalism wrote their dissertations about "Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood" they clearly never imagined that one day in the future that creed would give way to multiculturalism and miscegenation (after all, they were racists) but, despite what they foresaw, it was a natural continuation of their beliefs, much in the same way that the union of disparate races and ethnic groups is a natural evolution of the universalist creed that united disparate ethnic groups and tribes in the British Isles.
Blanket attacks on their character, drawn from comments which have been made on an ignorance of the full facts is counter-productive.
When the level of Westerners capable of enlightenment is so absolutely low, it hardly makes any difference to classify them as barbarians and say it to their face.
No matter how rare it may be, I believe everybody should be given a chance.
I believe it to be a better use of one's time and effort to try and influence and enlighten those who are misguided (like fellow countrymen) than alien peoples who have demonstrated nothing to the effect that they can become civilized.
Your quickness to accuse him of having a savage mindset is similar to those that accuse me of hate because it means that they don’t have to examine the other alternatives.
No, it's not the same. My quickness to denounce barbarians of being, well, barbaric is based from experience and, more importantly, based on the historical record. I have examined the alternative (i.e. that I am mistaken and Westerners are not barbarians) and have found no evidence to support that position. If I did find some evidence, I would naturally revise my position.
You have already acknowledged that there are enlightened Westerners, therefore I can only assume that you consider the West as a whole incapable of becoming enlightened.
That's right.
I’m inclined to think that may be the case. But I don’t think that the righteousness of the battle can be judged by the outcome. In this case we can’t even be sure of the outcome. In the end I can only do so much. I am on my own journey, I don’t claim to have all the answers. But I’m pretty sure that I have some, and that I can help others on an individual level. I’ll approach every fellow man with an open mind, and I definitely won’t make judgements about whether they’re irredeemable or not. In the end you can only do your best. I don’t think making negative assumptions is useful or desirable.
Although I obviously don't subscribe to all of those views, I can respect that position, even if I do find it to be a little impractical and idealistic to approach just anyone in the hopes of convincing them of the truth.
Furthermore if one is already enlightened it strikes me as a slightly unnatural state to be so unwilling to guide or enlighten others on certain issues on the basis that you judge them to be barbarians.
Perhaps it's a cultural thing. After all, my people have always viewed the West as barbaric. And even before the West existed (i.e., during the classical era), others were likewise viewed as savages, with only a few exceptions. However, the main reason I'm unwilling to waste time guiding Westerners is because I feel it's futile. Not because I personally believe so but rather because that is what history has shown me. I already brought up the argument regarding Orthodoxy. But that's not the only one to be made. There's another argument to be made: that of culture. Westerners claim to be heirs of Greco-Roman civilization but, in truth, there is nothing remotely Greek or Roman about their civilization, which is entirely based on Germanic culture. However, the fact remains that Westerners were exposed to the much more advanced Greco-Roman civilization. They studied philosophy, government, and other areas of knowledge. But did they learn anything? Did this knowledge permeate their barbaric Germanic civilization? No, it didn't. Instead of learning from this example, they simply hijacked Greco-Roman civilization by classifying it as "Western" and, in the process, elevated themselves in their own eyes to a higher status. After all, tracing one's cultural heritage to an advanced civilization is far more prestigious than to an inferior civilization of disunited forest barbarians whose greatest accomplishment was destroying the Roman Empire through bloody conquest. Westerners were so arrogant that not only did they learn nothing from the peoples they claimed they were the successors to but they even denied the true heirs of that civilization (i.e. the Eastern Roman Empire) by trying to rival its legitimacy with a so-called "Holy Roman Empire". However, this was not the case for all peoples exposed to Greco-Roman culture. The Arabs, after their exposure to Greco-Roman civilization, became far more sophisticated than any medieval Western European kingdom. Likewise, the Slavs rose to great heights after coming into contact with the Eastern Roman Empire. It seems that the only people who did not benefit were Germanic Westerners -- even though they were the most adamant in claiming that civilization as their own.
While the level of estrangement to the faith is not so great at all in comparison with the West, it is not an exaggeration to say that Serbs or Russians fell away from the faith, especially during their communist times (and before those times to a certain extent).
Do you truly believe that? Surely you must recognize that the Bolshevik Revolution was organized by Jews and that Communists came to power in Serbia only because the West betrayed Mihailovic and actively aided Tito. In both instances, the Russians and Serbs were subjugated by outside forces. This is unlike the Western experience in which Westerners led themselves astray by their own hand. That's a very important difference.
Hellenic Nationalist:
First, allow me to apologise if I caused you distress and/or insulted you personally, that was not my intention, Nikola, and i respect you as a fellow Orthodox Christian and ,likewise, I try to honor all genuine Orthdox Christians, especially Serbs, as brothers.
Well I appreciate that. I believe you blog on a lot of interesting current affairs and Orthodox issues, but I felt that your overly aggressive stance smeared this. We all know how much fire the Jewish issue draws when it is mentioned. Therefore, unless the aim is to purely preach to the converted, one needs to be whiter than white. The same thing goes for Orthodoxy; it needs to be presented in the best light. That means we can’t afford to be aggressive or unreasonable, should refrain from insults and should be consistent. I get the feeling that you’ve drawn the battle lines and don’t feel the need to help, communicate with or influence anyone outside who you view as your allies. But given that you link to Final Conflict and are a fan of David Irving even you have found those in the English nation that you can identify or agree with. I was confused as to why you would just go off on one and I doubt that you would say what you said on either of their sites. Had anyone insulted Greece I would have had no hesitation to intervene on your side (and before you take offence, I’m not saying that the state of Greece is comparable to that of England).
As to the Englishmen invading Cyprus year after year since 1878, eitheir as military chauvinists or touristic chauvinists, I still stand by my brothers in Cyprus, who have seen close to fifthy percent of their, or OUR,island decimated and desecrated and destroyed under the watchful eyes and able assistance of 'great' britian. There is a natural and justifiable 'hatred' for lack of a better word of the english bcs of this, and englishmen themsleves should , if they were good christians, look to the root cause of why this 'hatred' exists.
Indeed they should, and given the disposition of the majority of the people that read this site, they will look at the root cause objectively. I have absolutely NO problem with you pointing out these things. The problem I had was that you simply insulted a nation from the start, then when people took offence you introduced your rationale for hating them. I mean these people are aware of the degenerate state of their homeland, otherwise they wouldn’t read a blog that states: ‘I am an Orthodox Christian Serb nationalist born and living in the degenerate west, watching as my homeland slowly succumbs to the same illnesses’. But your calling them a ‘nation of poofters’ seemed to me like a gratuitous insult, and the worst possible way of introducing your subsequent legitimate grievances.
And I am sorry, Nikola, but the actions of a few hotheaded greek youth towards the hordes who descend upon their homeland to openly fornicate and use their homeland as a public urinal in their 'holidays in the sun' is of immensley greater evil and shows the lack of inconsideration for the rest of humanity which manifests itself in the behavoir of not only the active English imperialists, past and present, but also in the massive disrespct shown by your average englishman who even goes as far as to kill out of spite. So, no, the actions of those few Greek victims who have a Government and a state that does not stop this abomination and an elite that is in collabaoration with this abomination is simply a small expression of resistance on behalf of those Greek youths who cannot take it anymore, and have chosen active resistance, in the tradition of others in the past such as the heroic EOKA resistance which took up arms and attacked the british Empire's hold on Cyprus in the 1950s -1970s , by targetting both military and civilian targets of the Britsh/English occupation of our homeland, as to wether or not this was an un-Christian practice of not showing restraint and clam is simply a question of degree.
If I was not Christian I would probably completely endorse skinhead type tactics. It is logical that if you don’t want someone in your land, the most effective way of dealing with that problem is to use violence and treat them as badly as possible. But since I am a Christian this simply cannot be an acceptable form of behaviour. I mean our faith teaches us that the end does not justify the means.
True, I do link to foreigners on my blog-an iranian, a Mexican, an American based historical institute, and even an Englishman(David Irving)--if you or anyone else came to my blog and attacked any or all of those nationalisites I would publish the comments, I have a personal policy of publishing any comments which do not try to give out info on me or my relatives or do not contain outright anti-Christian blasphemy--I would let it stand and let those people defend themselves. And if it came down , hypothetically, to a fight between , lets say an American and YOU (my genuine Orthodox Christian brother) I would always stand by your side.
All other things being equal, I would expect you to be on my side. And all other things being equal I will side with a Greek over virtually every other nationality. But if I was on your blog making insulting comments about other peoples nations or religions without them having provoked me, you would be within your rights to class this as unreasonable behaviour, regardless of the fact that I was Serb.
My loyalty is not to the place where i happened to be born and live and the many degnerates who populate that place (America), my loyalty is to Greece (my true Fatherland) and to genuine Orthodox Christians (like the Serbs)
Of course loyalty goes to your faith and people, that’s the way it should be. I was merely trying to point out that you have clearly seen something beneficial on these sites and hence link them. If I did want to criticise the nation or religion of one of the individuals you link to then I would try and display the facts dispassionately. It seemed to me like you just wanted to rile people.
Hellenist:
My reply to your points may take a while since I'm trying to find some extracts from a relevant book I read recently. Summarising them is what is taking me some time.
Hellenian:
Well, if you understand the concept of universality (i.e., "relation, extension, or applicability to all") then its application to nation-forming shouldn't be very difficult to follow.
I can understand the concept of universality as regards the American nation. But my point was that if you’re going to use it to describe the formation of a nation such as the English, on the basis that the tribes that formed it were disparate, that exact case can be made for a majority of nations. That would imply universality was a natural process.
No, it's not absolutely necessary but, given how often it has occurred in history, it is a natural process. However, due to some factors, the formation of the English identity was about as natural as the formation of the American identity. In other words, it was artificial and invented rather than natural and organic.
Yes insomuch as invasion and subjugation is artificial, you can call it artificial. But in America entire races and sub races came together in an orchestrated melting pot. In Britain you had a Germanic invasion of a Celtic populace. Some Celts were absorbed, some weren’t. The fact that Welsh or Scots exist doesn’t make the English an artificial nation. The processes by which the two countries were created, and the similarity of the groups involved in each case, are totally incomparable
I disagree. It is mostly comparable to Western Europe (rather than Europe as a whole) where almost every single people are of at least partial Germanic stock. However, I wouldn't say that the case of Western Europe can be extrapolated to the rest of the world since it is unique in some ways.
Well of course every continent is unique in its admixture. Of course there’s variation within continents as well. What I’m saying is that the Germanic people are as closely related to the Celtic people as the Slavs were to the Old Europeans living in present day Serbia. So I don’t believe that the idea that they were disparate peoples is sustainable if you accept the Serbian nation. If the fact that they never assimilated people such as the Cornish makes them an illegitimate nation, there is again an analogy with the Serbs who never assimilated the Vlachs.
When I cited Scottish, Welsh, and Cornish I was mainly referring to the fact these peoples don't identify as English and, to various extents, have ambitions of secession. However, even in terms of linguistic differences, some scholars regard Scots as a distinct Germanic language. Standard Scottish English is, as you say, an accent but I am not talking about that.
Well the Scottish and Welsh don’t identify as English because they never succumbed to the English and preserved their identity. But that doesn’t change the fact that most Celts were absorbed and a nation created. In so much as they have ambitions of secession, it is from Britain, not England. I don’t understand why the fact that the Welsh don’t identify as English makes the English a universal nation. They don’t identify with Scottish people either, neither do the English identify with either the Scots or the Welsh. Does that make all 3 illegitimate? Some Celts survived and kept their identity, some were assimilated with the invaders. But what happened there is no different to countless other cases in Eastern Europe as well.
Let me make an analogy to you now: Alexander the Great conquered much of the East, creating a vast empire where the Greek language and Hellenic culture dominated all others (with the result that a Hellenistic culture was formed), and began a policy of having his soldiers mix with the native populations in order to unite them. Now, despite the fact that, at that time, most of the people spoke Greek (along with their native tongues) and were directly affected by Hellenic culture, no one would seriously claim that they are Greek today. This is similar to what happened in the British Isles.
That would be a valid analogy if I were claiming that the Welsh or Scottish were English. It would be ludicrous to claim that the Afghans, for example, who are partial descendants of Alexander’s men are Greek. But in the English case, the Celts that have been successfully absorbed have been part of a unified country for over a thousand years.
That's irrelevant because, by that logic, since Serbs, Croatians, and Slovenes are all closely related racially, one might argue that they are one ethnic group. However, the Great Powers' role in uniting these separate ethnic groups proved disastrous because, despite racial and linguistic similarities, each group was unique and had its own national identity. The same applies to any similarities that may exist between Celts and Germanics.
What I am saying is that it is certainly easier if the tribes are racially, culturally and linguistically similar. The reason Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes did not mesh together is for a large part due to religion, a difference that did not exist in the British case, and also a clearly defined national identities. I’m simply saying that Celts and Germanics cannot be compared with Africans and Europeans. Celts and Germans have created a viable nation and identity that has lasted for more than a thousand years, the Americans have created a melting pot of races and religions which is already falling apart.
I believe it to be a better use of one's time and effort to try and influence and enlighten those who are misguided (like fellow countrymen) than alien peoples who have demonstrated nothing to the effect that they can become civilized.
That’s your choice, but I’d like to reach out further than that. I don’t believe that they are mutually exclusive options. Posting on a blog and interacting with people in everyday life is not something that requires so much effort that I have no time left to help my own people. The blog itself contains a large amount of posts directed at Serbs and Orthodox in any case.
No, it's not the same. My quickness to denounce barbarians of being, well, barbaric is based from experience and, more importantly, based on the historical record. I have examined the alternative (i.e. that I am mistaken and Westerners are not barbarians) and have found no evidence to support that position. If I did find some evidence, I would naturally revise my position.
It was not an entirely valid comparison I concede. While people often accuse me of hate because they lack the facts to make a coherent argument, I was not implying this in your case. I was trying to highlight the fact that you were quick to overlook the possibility that people were making errors honestly in making your statement that they were savage. In other words people who don’t agree with me assume my only motive is hate, they do not consider I may be honestly mistaken. You seemed to almost be wishing his motive to be malicious, and did not consider any other option. I can personally vouch for the fact that BNP member is no savage.
Although I obviously don't subscribe to all of those views, I can respect that position, even if I do find it to be a little impractical and idealistic to approach just anyone in the hopes of convincing them of the truth.
Ultimately one clearly cannot convince everyone of the truth. But that doesn’t mean that everyone should not be given a chance.
Perhaps it's a cultural thing. After all, my people have always viewed the West as barbaric. And even before the West existed (i.e., during the classical era), others were likewise viewed as savages, with only a few exceptions.
Yes I think it is a cultural thing. My own people do regard their own faith, heritage, and nationhood as something beautiful and unique. We have a famous song which starts with ‘No one has that which Serbs have. But we don’t have this view of other peoples being barbarians in comparison. Perhaps your long and well-documented history gives you a feeling of superiority to others. I read this in one of St. Nikolaj’s books a while back:
The very limited knowledge of our history has one good point. The Jews, Indians, Greeks, Romans, and Chinese have knowledge of their history going back thousands of years. It makes them pompous, it disorientates them and dampens their energies. Especially the christened Greeks and Romans. They pride themselves on their pagan heroes and philosophers the same as in their Christian Saints and martyrs. It divides them, confuses them and weakens them. We Slavs know well only our Christian history. Our pagan history is not very well known and is without fame or glory. All of our glory was in our Christian period. The last 800 years is, for the Serbs, an unrivalled period of the crystallization of personal and national character. A period of effort, struggle, suffering and glory. All in the sign of the cross and for freedom.
The pagan pride of some Greeks in their ancient culture can be seen today by the existence of certain political movements which glorify that era, pagan societies which want to restore paganism (an inconsequential number of buffoons for now, but they exist nonetheless), and even otherwise very good websites that have articles on how Alexander the Great paved the way for Christianity.
There's another argument to be made: that of culture. Westerners claim to be heirs of Greco-Roman civilization but, in truth, there is nothing remotely Greek or Roman about their civilization, which is entirely based on Germanic culture. However, the fact remains that Westerners were exposed to the much more advanced Greco-Roman civilization.
This is where the cultural difference comes in again. Serbian history from pre-Christian times is almost entirely unknown and undocumented. Our entire national idea was borne out of Orthodoxy. That is why we don’t really ponder on the greatness of our ‘civilization’ or ‘culture’ in comparison with others. The only worthwhile culture or civilization that we acknowledge is one based on eternal truths, not on technology, poetry, military prowess etc. While Ancient Greece and Rome created much of worth, no matter how advanced they were in temporal feats, they were entirely impotent when it came to that which is most important. All the other components of culture and civilization should serve and reflect the Truth. Once the Truth was revealed, it really made all previous cultures and civilizations worthless in so far as they did not embody and incorporate it.
Do you truly believe that? Surely you must recognize that the Bolshevik Revolution was organized by Jews and that Communists came to power in Serbia only because the West betrayed Mihailovic and actively aided Tito. In both instances, the Russians and Serbs were subjugated by outside forces. This is unlike the Western experience in which Westerners led themselves astray by their own hand. That's a very important difference.
You have brought up 2 major issues: that of culture and that of responsibility.
As regards culture, you argue that a lack of their own authentic culture makes the West inevitable and hopeless barbarians. You also say that Westerners were exposed to a more advanced Greco-Roman civilization but didn’t learn anything.
The following quotes are from ‘Words to the Serbian nation through the dungeon window’, written by St. Nikolaj during WW2. You might remember I mentioned it in the comments section of my Israel post. In this book he explains why Serbia is suffering and also discusses the obsession of ‘sophisticated’ and worldly Serbs with ‘culture’. Forgive me if I quote too much, but once I started, I felt compelled to include as much as possible. Not all of this Saints works has been translated, and most likely this will be the last work to be translated, since it is primarily an appeal to Serbs, but also because it is brutally honest and uncomfortable reading for some. Therefore I have done the best I can to translate the following extracts.
Firstly, regarding culture:
There are 3 levels of achievement with which men and nations can pride themselves on. The lowest level is when men or nations pride themselves on things; that is with something. A greater level is when men or nation prides themselves on people; that is with somebody. And the highest level is when they pride themselves on their closeness to their creator.
Are we Serbs going to pride ourselves on our culture? What is culture? It is human handiwork, the creation of man. Those are things. If we are going to pride ourselves on culture, we will pride ourselves on dead objects, not living beings. We would be on the lowest level of pride. And we could pride ourselves on our culture, because we possessed it, and still possess it. Truly we could do so ahead of many nations, if such an action were not beneath our dignity, or if we had no shame. Europe prides itself on culture; never in their history have Serbs prided themselves on their culture. If we begin to pride ourselves on our culture, we will turn from our path and tread a foreign path. This we in fact did, we turned from our path and went the way of others, for which we suffered like never before.
The history of the world shows that the highest culture in terms of the most fundamental understandings about life, are completely equal to the lowest cultures; and the most so-called enlightened nations are totally equal to nomadic African tribes. The gods of the Egyptian culture are the gods of the hut-dwelling Nubians. The gods of the knowledgeable Indians are the same as those of the island cannibals. The faith and ancestral spirits of the great China is the same faith of illiterate shepherds in the Gobi desert. What does this mean? It means that advance of culture has had absolutely no impact on the advance of faith. The only advance was in the artistic expression of faith; for while the Himalayan shepherds were simply carving the face of Bramin or Shiva on wood, with a few scratches, the cultured Indians were making the same images but on marble or ivory. But the faith was the same: the same name of gods, the same fear, and the same prayers and sacrifices.
Whether a person is going to bow down to a live monkey or a monkey carved from wood, or one made from mud, or from ivory or marble, it is the same stupidity, the same ignorance, the same darkness. And not only did culture not end the worship of monkeys, but it enforced it by expressing its gods artistically and in marble. Wherever you look, everywhere you see the same: the culture of God-less nations aided the strengthening of Godlessness in those nations.
The true faith, the Christian faith, that is the knowledge uncovered by God to men, about the most important things: of One God, of the soul, about the journey of life, about the next life, and the judgement of God. That revealed faith is not dependant on culture nor on a lack of culture, nor on worldly knowledge, nor on a knowledge of incidental things. Incidental things are: how to make soap from animal fat, how to make iron from ore, how roads are made, how bridges are built, how one counts, calculates, measures, how one cultivates, inoculates and explores his mind using psychology. Human reason is enough for all these little knowledges. Modern education is the accumulation of all this incidental knowledge. Modern education has made for itself, and the world, a divinity of all these little knowledges, sciences, skills and accomplishments…
Many centuries ago, the universities of Europe were truly engaged in the most important and fundamental questions of our existence. But as they realised that such knowledge cannot be gained by human effort, without the grace of Gods revelation, those universities gradually fell and transformed themselves into little workshops where one can learn of anything that comes from this world, but nothing of that which comes from heaven.
European learning separated itself from faith and God. In that lies its transformation into a disseminator of poison, and in this lies the death of European man. Never in Godless cultures did science separate itself from faith, even though the faith was false and stupid. Only in Europe did that happen; in the same Europe which had accepted the perfect faith from God. But as a result of a battle with the European clergy, Europe has fragmented and rejected the most perfect faith, and kept the most perfect science. Oh my brothers, she rejected divine wisdom and accepted human folly! What stupidity and what darkness!
It was Europe that we Serbs followed. Because of this we bitterly suffered. Will we come to our senses? Will we have the wisdom and bravery to turn back from this path, and onto the true path and away from Europe? This is now the life and death question that lies before us. If we go the way of our forefathers, we won’t be mistaken. We will have no regrets if we return to the true faith and shake of the false worldview of science. Let us be men and not monkeys, and God will receive us as his sons. Amen
What is culture? It is the product of human works, human pride; a colourful dust which men accumulate and safe guard, but which the winds of time scatter and return to its original ashes. What is culture in comparison to God? … Smoke and ashes, a childish play toy, an idiotic nothingness. What is culture in comparison to man? Precisely nothing. Man is a living being and the work of God. Culture is a dead entity and the work of man.
Therefore how can one give up on a nation or on men because they didn’t appreciate or accept mere culture?
The second issue you bring up is that of responsibility. You seem surprised that I stated that Serbs and Russians sinned which led to our current downfall. Of course I’m not saying that no one betrayed us, or that no one plotted against us, they certainly did. But I cannot subscribe to the idea that we have no responsibility for our downfall, while Westerners led themselves astray.
Again I refer to Saint Nikolaj, who was alive to witness the period he talks about:
We have rejected Christ, and for that we were rejected by Christ.
Yugoslavia meant contempt for Christ, contempt for Saint Sava, contempt for Serbdom, contempt for the Serbian national past, contempt to the national wisdom, and for our integrity, contempt for every Holy thing- contempt and nothing but contempt. Because of that we have a state without Christ’s blessing, freedom without joy, war without resistance, downfall without glory, suffering without inspiration.
Do you know brothers why in our time heavenly God has allowed for the 2nd time on the whole world the horrors of war which can be compared only with the horrors of hell. Because the worth of man fell below the worth of gold. And that is against Gods plan regarding man. And however man resists the plan of God, that resistance must break, fall, die, and be extinguished. And in our country gold had begun to be valued more than man. That is why our land was hit with the terrible whip of war, the whip consisting of evil and misery. That we would learn to value God above man, and men above gold.
When Serbia was created, great men lived in little homes. When Serbia was replaced with Yugoslavia, little people lived in big palaces. The whole of Karadjordje’s army, which raised the uprising (against the Turks), could have been garrisoned in the palace of one Yugoslav aristocrat in Belgrade. The people grumbled, but bit-by-bit they too went the way of its elite, and gave themselves to a love of money, and the despising of men. Because of money people were killed, houses burnt, marriages formed, marriages destroyed, communities split, parties formed, brothers quarrelled, the Serbian name was dirtied, the faith rejected, the Holy betrayed, the fatherland sold out. That is why the terrible day of the Lord had to come my brothers.
In the following passage he poetically writes as if God himself is rebuking the Serbian nation:
Because the new Serbian gentry were embarrassed to go to Church to pray; and to praise My name in universities; because they began to worship the created rather than the Creator of heaven and earth; because they abandoned the glorifying of my angels and saints, and started glorifying mortal men; and because they imitated the most crazy and God-less people and evil heretics in the world, accepting and repeating their crazy words, and reading and writing nonsensical books which were a guide to hell. The old Serbian rulers and leading families respected me differently and taught the Serbian nation another way. Tell me, is it a small thing for which I am angry? Tell me, were you to invite guests into your house and were they to overeat, get drunk, to start insulting the host, and paying respect to the servants, and the chairs and tables, pans and dishes, would you not be angry?
The greatest sons of a nation serve as an example to the nation. But they are not just examples, they are also the protectors of the nation. But they are not just protectors, they are also the accusers of the nation. Who was Saint Sava? He was the most beautiful example to the Serbian people, the fiery defender of the Serbian people, but also the accuser of the Serbian people before God.
Who would have thought this? In fact this is perfectly natural, that the person that gave rise to our spiritual renewal, has the right to accuse us. When the Jews were already plotting against Christ, the Saviour said: 'Don't think that I will denounce you to God; there is another that will accuse you, Moses, who you look up to.' /John 5, 45/ In this way witness was borne on evil doers by those that had seen the heavenly world, just like the earthly one. ......... You ask for what would Saint Sava accuse you before God? Truly there are two or three things for which he could accuse us.
First, he could accuse us of being weak and for kneeling down to European idolatry. (Reference to the acceptance among Serbs of western secular civilization instead of our Orthodox faith.)
...Second, he could accuse us because our leaders gave more respect to Mohammed and the Pope than to him. (Reference to a time in-between the world wars, I think Islam and Catholicism were given greater rights in Yugoslav schools.)
You ask for what would Saint Sava accuse you before God? Truly there are five or ten things for which he could accuse us. Firstly for schools without faith; secondly for politics without respect; thirdly for an army without a unity of spirit; fourthly for marriages without faithfullness, and so on.
Are you still asking why our Saint Sava could accuse us before God? Truly, because of ten or twenty things he could accuse us. Because of unmarried and self-obsessed middle aged people; because of weak minded youth; because of soulless selfish people, because of greedy bachelors without children; because of impurity of the soul; because of dirty tongues; because of blasphemy; because of disrespect to parents; because of laughing at teachers; because of competition in outwitting rather than helping brothers; and because of the statues we did and didn't put up in front of our parliament; and because we did not put a cross on the memorial to the unknown hero on Avala.
And for many more of our sins and crazy deeds Saint Sava can accuse us before God.
Who can say that Serbs, throughout the 19th century, did not depart from their covenant with Christ, bit by bit, but continuously all the way up to modern times and the last 2 great wars.
To view ourselves as entirely innocent of responsibility for all the misfortunes that have come down upon us, and to blame others is entirely unhelpful and overly simplistic. Despite all the conspiracies and betrayals the question is: why were the Serbian people allowed by God to succumb to these threats if they were so faithful. The answer is that they were not, and that the weakness of the Serbian people was a major reason why catastrophes have befallen us. Its not very palatable to accept, but if we don’t first accept responsibility then we can’t repent. Again St. Nikolaj:
My brothers blame no one. We ourselves are to blame. We are to blame before the one true God. Because we lurched towards the false gods of culture. That is why we were pushed away from God and fell into hell where he dwells not, to see how it is without him. And we saw and we felt…
Truly I tell you, Serbs deserve the wrath of God for their many sins, personal and collective. But the same Serbs deserve praise for one of their core characteristics. In what is that core trait of the Serbian nation? In self blame. Whenever Serbs found themselves in misfortune they cried to heaven and earth: we are to blame. We ourselves are guilty of the misfortune that has found us. At Kosovo the Turks were not to blame but Vuk Brankovic. At Maritsa the Asiatics weren’t to blame, but Vukashin. God be merciful to us sinful Serbs and save us!
This language is unknown to the lovers of power and arrogant nations of Europe. They never accept their guilt. The have lost their conception of sin and repentance. For every evil in the world they blame others; themselves never.
And I tell you, safeguard that spirit of humbleness and repentance before God. As long as that spirit lives in the breasts of Serbs, the Serbs will exist as a Godly nation.
So in answer to your question, yes I do truly to believe that we are guilty of much and brought suffering upon ourselves. The fact that others inflicted this suffering, often in brutal and treacherous ways should not be ignored, but to entirely focus on it without asking why we succumbed is a mistake.
You also said that the West brought their misfortune upon themselves. While their fall was much greater than that of Serbs, and they complied more readily, again it is unfair to ascribe ALL blame on them, if you accept that outside forces influenced Serbia. Again St. Nikolaj:
"... During the course of ages, they who crucified the Messiah, the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, made Europe into the chief battle ground for the devil and against God. And it is today the chief battle-ground of the Jews and of the devil the father of the Jews... Europe does not know this, and here lies all the desperation of its fate, the entire dark tragedy of its peoples. Above all it does not know whom it belongs to. It knows nothing but that which the Jews have ordered it to believe. It can judge of the value of nothing until the Jews have set up their balance for the measurement of value. Its politicians like sleepwalkers in their delirium talk of the equality (ignorance) of all beliefs and non-beliefs, that is, that which the Jews want and desire, because it is necessary for them to have legal equality with Christians, so that they can then drive out Christianity and have Christianity made non-believers, and place their foot on their necks.
All the modern catch-words of Europe have been composed by the Jews who crucified Christ, including democracy, and strikes, and socialism, and atheism and the toleration of all religions, and pacifism and universal revolution and capitalism and communism.
All these are the invention of Jews, or of the devil, the father of the Jews. But the wonder is that the Europeans, baptized and anointed, should have surrendered so totally to the Jews that they think with Jewish minds, accept Jewish programmes, adopt Jewish anti-Christianity, receive Jewish lies as truth, welcome Jewish catch-words as their own, walk along the Jewish path and serve Jewish aims. This is the thing to wonder at in our time, and nothing else in the world.
Everything else is less important or unimportant. But the most important thing is how Christian Europe managed to become the serving maid of the Jews... Think on these things, brother Serbs..."
I can understand the concept of universality as regards the American nation. But my point was that if you’re going to use it to describe the formation of a nation such as the English, on the basis that the tribes that formed it were disparate, that exact case can be made for a majority of nations. That would imply universality was a natural process.
It's not just that they were disparate but that universalism, as embodied by English law and tradition, was used much like an ideology. Universality is not a natural process which may explain why the English identity is starting to deteriorate; nature is correcting the historical anomaly that is the English.
In Britain you had a Germanic invasion of a Celtic populace. Some Celts were absorbed, some weren’t. The fact that Welsh or Scots exist doesn’t make the English an artificial nation. The processes by which the two countries were created, and the similarity of the groups involved in each case, are totally incomparable
I feel that is a gross simplification given that the conquered were peoples with their own unique identities. It's true that the fact that the Welsh or Scottish exist doesn't make the English artificial but it does demonstrates that peoples with unique ethnic identities were conquered and that such peoples cannot be simply relegated to the status of "proto-English".
What I’m saying is that the Germanic people are as closely related to the Celtic people as the Slavs were to the Old Europeans living in present day Serbia. So I don’t believe that the idea that they were disparate peoples is sustainable if you accept the Serbian nation.
I don't see how the Celts are closely related to Germanics based on the fact that Germanics assimilated them. The Slavs assimilated the Turkic Bulgars but they obviously were not closely related in either cultural, racial, or linguistic ways.
Well the Scottish and Welsh don’t identify as English because they never succumbed to the English and preserved their identity. But that doesn’t change the fact that most Celts were absorbed and a nation created. In so much as they have ambitions of secession, it is from Britain, not England.
It is my understanding that the English make up the largest single population of the UK and that England is its largest constituent country. Therefore, it is not incorrect to state that secession from Britain is synonymous with secession from England.
I don’t understand why the fact that the Welsh don’t identify as English makes the English a universal nation. They don’t identify with Scottish people either, neither do the English identify with either the Scots or the Welsh. Does that make all 3 illegitimate? Some Celts survived and kept their identity, some were assimilated with the invaders. But what happened there is no different to countless other cases in Eastern Europe as well.
The Scottish and the Welsh are not illegitimate because they did not employ universalism to form their nations whereas the English did. The English are, in a sense, a mish-mash of ethnic groups and tribes of the British Isles that were not as fortunate as the Scottish and Welsh. That is why I compare them to the Americans. Following that analogy, the Scottish and Welsh would be something like the American Indians: they were conquered and largely lost their sovereignty, culture, and language but still consider themselves separate from the majority.
But in the English case, the Celts that have been successfully absorbed have been part of a unified country for over a thousand years.
There were many groups that were absorbed in order to form the English (some Celtic and others not) and they each had their own ethnic or tribal identities. Since you don't accept the Alexander the Great analogy, here's another: Right now, a European Union exists and there are attempts to create a more federalized EU in the hopes of creating an artificial "European" identity. This would transform nations into mere states of a Federal Europe and ethno-national groups into regional groups who all view themselves as "European". If this were to hypothetically take place, would you recognize the new "European" identity as legitimate considering that the peoples who were liquidated in order to form it had their own languages, histories, cultures, and identities? To a much less radical degree, that is what happened in the English case.
What I am saying is that it is certainly easier if the tribes are racially, culturally and linguistically similar.
But do you feel it to be legitimate if they weren't similar and, moreover, if they were subjugated into it?
The reason Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes did not mesh together is for a large part due to religion, a difference that did not exist in the British case, and also a clearly defined national identities.
I hold that those clearly defined identifies existed in the case of the English and that the the reason the mesh was successful was because of complete subjugation over a long period of time.
Celts and Germans have created a viable nation and identity that has lasted for more than a thousand years, the Americans have created a melting pot of races and religions which is already falling apart.
The UK is also a melting pot of races and religions and, like its American counterpart, is also falling apart. Another similarity between the UK and America: both countries were formed by the same people, the English. The same goes for Australia. Why do I bring this up? Because it seems that, whatever part of the globe they ended up, the English formed multicultural states. A true people would have united all of those states but, due to the lack of a strong ethno-national identity, the English did not. This goes back to what I said about English nationalism being about "racial nationalism" instead of ethnic nationalism. These people view themselves as "white" more than anything else. And, given their history, it's not any sort of surprise.
Yes I think it is a cultural thing. My own people do regard their own faith, heritage, and nationhood as something beautiful and unique. We have a famous song which starts with ‘No one has that which Serbs have. But we don’t have this view of other peoples being barbarians in comparison. Perhaps your long and well-documented history gives you a feeling of superiority to others. I read this in one of St. Nikolaj’s books a while back:
The very limited knowledge of our history has one good point. The Jews, Indians, Greeks, Romans, and Chinese have knowledge of their history going back thousands of years. It makes them pompous, it disorientates them and dampens their energies. Especially the christened Greeks and Romans. They pride themselves on their pagan heroes and philosophers the same as in their Christian Saints and martyrs. It divides them, confuses them and weakens them. We Slavs know well only our Christian history. Our pagan history is not very well known and is without fame or glory. All of our glory was in our Christian period. The last 800 years is, for the Serbs, an unrivalled period of the crystallization of personal and national character. A period of effort, struggle, suffering and glory. All in the sign of the cross and for freedom.
The pagan pride of some Greeks in their ancient culture can be seen today by the existence of certain political movements which glorify that era, pagan societies which want to restore paganism (an inconsequential number of buffoons for now, but they exist nonetheless), and even otherwise very good websites that have articles on how Alexander the Great paved the way for Christianity.
It is true that there is disorientation amongst Greeks (including nationalists) but this is a modern phenomenon that came about during the Greek Revolution. During the era of the Eastern Roman Empire, Greeks were aware (and proud) of their ancient legacy and it was not in conflict with their Christian identity. (For more information regarding the Hellenic identity of the Romioi, see "Christian Hellenism and How the Byzantines Saw Themselves" by Rev. Demetrios J. Constantelos.) Contemporary confusion stems from the Western misinterpretation of Hellenism and the ideological role they played during the Greek Revolution. Originally, the Greek Revolution was about re-establishing an Eastern Roman Empire. However, Westerners -- who despised the Eastern Roman Empire because of false historical narratives that maligned it as degenerate and backwards, such as those by Edward Gibbon -- did not see it that way, assuming that the Greek nation would be some sort of revival of classical Hellenism based on liberal Western values. This purely constructed Western model was transmitted to Greece through Greek intellectuals who had lived all or most of their lives in the West, been educated in the West, and greatly admired Western European nations. They felt an immense pride that these mighty nations looked upon classical Greece as representing the spiritual basis of their Western civilization. That Western Europeans had taken up the Greek cause for independence based on this fictional connection was more reason why Greek intellectuals accepted the position that Greco-Roman civilization was an inseparable part of Western civilization and why they collaborated with the Westerners to adjust and re-write classical Greece's role in history and distance modern Greece from its Eastern Roman heritage. The immense Europhilia that these Western-educated Greeks felt can be summed up in the person of Adamantios Korais:
"The most celebrated Neohellenist of this age was Adamantios Koraes. Koraes hated Byzantium and the Byzantine spirit and tradition, which he saw as a dead weight on the otherwise pure and free Greek spirit. His mission in life was to recall the Greeks to the great heritage of their ancient past. His most important work in this respect was his Hellenic Library (Hellenike Bibliotheke). This was a series of classical texts supplied with edifying introductions about the cultural, educational, and linguistic problems of contemporary Greece. Koraes was a great man and a great scholar. But for the most of his life he lived in western Europe. He was the son of a silk merchant in Smyrna and tried to go into business himself in Amsterdam before settling in Paris. He was an absentee patriot, seventy-three years old when the war of independence broke out in Greece; and he was deeply influence by the enlightenment and the political ideas of the French Revolution. These were the ideas that fed the flames of the Greek desire for liberation, and for a national identity as Hellenes. For Koraes, as Arnold Toynbee puts it, "Modern Western Enlightenment" and "Classical Greek Hellenism" were interchangeable terms.
"Enlightened western Europeans of the early nineteenth century, captivated and brainwashed by Edward Gibbon's account of Byzantium, were inclined to blame the Greeks for their own degeneration under the Ottoman Empire. They should never have allowed themselves to sink into the supersitition and decadence of that monk-ridden society. As Koraes would have agreed, it was the Byzantine period of their history that had promoted the corruption of Greeks, which had merely been consummated by the Turks. What, as one German scholar put it, was the point of studying a depraved form of the Greek language in which the preposition apo takes the accusative instead of the genitive case. Such were thought to be the symptoms of the Byzantine corruption of the soul and spirit of ancient Greece". (Excerpt from the lecture "Greece and Byzantium" by D.M. Nicol.)
Even though Hellenes never used the term "Greece" to refer to our country at any time in our history, Adamantios Korais preferred this term over others, stating that "I approved 'Greece' because that is what all the enlightened nations of Europe call us". This is an important statement because, ever since then, Greek intellectuals and politicians have based the direction our nation should take not on our history, culture, or historical evolution but rather on what the West has done and what the West expects from us.
While Ancient Greece and Rome created much of worth, no matter how advanced they were in temporal feats, they were entirely impotent when it came to that which is most important. All the other components of culture and civilization should serve and reflect the Truth. Once the Truth was revealed, it really made all previous cultures and civilizations worthless in so far as they did not embody and incorporate it.
I strongly disagree. Rather than the Truth making Hellenism "worthless", Hellenism was utilized by the Truth and served it, precisely because the ancient Greeks valued and searched for truth, above everything else. Therefore, there is a reason why Orthodoxy was revealed and trasmitted in the Greek language and the Greek world. Both secular historians and Orthodox scholars agree that Greek thought played a major role in the development of Christianity. These statements should not be misinterpreted into believing that this means that Christianity was the result of human philosophy (obviously, it is not) but rather that there was a divine purpose in the development and transmission of Christianity in the Greek world rather than some random coincidence. (Saint Vladimir the Great, who was responsible for making Russia an Orthodox nation, is an example of this since he based his decision to convert to Orthodoxy on his envoys' reaction to the splendor of Constantinople.)
This is a massive topic and much has been written about it. Instead of arguing the role that Hellenic culture and civilization played in the development of Christianity, I leave you with this essay from Rev. Demetrios J. Constantelos, found on the Church of Greece's online library: "The Historical Development of Greek Orthodoxy". There are a number of other texts on Myriobiblos regarding Hellenism and Christianity and their interaction which you may want to read, if this topic interests you.
You have brought up 2 major issues: that of culture and that of responsibility.
As regards culture, you argue that a lack of their own authentic culture makes the West inevitable and hopeless barbarians. You also say that Westerners were exposed to a more advanced Greco-Roman civilization but didn’t learn anything.
The following quotes are from ‘Words to the Serbian nation through the dungeon window’, written by St. Nikolaj during WW2. You might remember I mentioned it in the comments section of my Israel post. In this book he explains why Serbia is suffering and also discusses the obsession of ‘sophisticated’ and worldly Serbs with ‘culture’. Forgive me if I quote too much, but once I started, I felt compelled to include as much as possible. Not all of this Saints works has been translated, and most likely this will be the last work to be translated, since it is primarily an appeal to Serbs, but also because it is brutally honest and uncomfortable reading for some. Therefore I have done the best I can to translate the following extracts.
Thanks for translating and making all of these texts available. They were all very enlightening. In the future, I shall have to study the works of Saint Nikolaj in more detail.
Therefore how can one give up on a nation or on men because they didn’t appreciate or accept mere culture?
Because we aren't talking about mere culture. Hellenic culture symbolizes more than just the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular ethnic group. Orthodox theologian Georges Florovsky stated, "The task of our time, in the Orthodox world, is to rebuild the
Christian-Hellenic culture, not out of the relics and memories of the past, but out of the perennial spirit of our Church, in which the values of culture were truly christened. Let us be more Hellenic in order that we may be truly Christian". In other words, what I'm trying to say here is that the Western rejection and aversion to (genuine) Greco-Roman civilization is no surprise given their rejection of Christianity. Both things are linked and the rejection of the culture symbolizes the rejection of Christianity. (And, indeed, Europe has rejected Christianity.)
To view ourselves as entirely innocent of responsibility for all the misfortunes that have come down upon us, and to blame others is entirely unhelpful and overly simplistic. Despite all the conspiracies and betrayals the question is: why were the Serbian people allowed by God to succumb to these threats if they were so faithful. The answer is that they were not, and that the weakness of the Serbian people was a major reason why catastrophes have befallen us.
[...]
So in answer to your question, yes I do truly to believe that we are guilty of much and brought suffering upon ourselves. The fact that others inflicted this suffering, often in brutal and treacherous ways should not be ignored, but to entirely focus on it without asking why we succumbed is a mistake.
Yes, you are right. This reminds me about the Fall of Constantinople and why it occurred. Although I don't have any texts at hand, I know I've heard that, if we hadn't fallen, eventually the Latins would have Catholicized us and so, the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire and the persecution by the Muslim Turk, is what ensured that Greeks (and other occupied peoples) would remain true to Orthodoxy. Likewise, there is a legend I was told when I was younger about how, after Constantinople had fallen, the sultan found a room with the imprint of a large hand. He consulted Muslim religious figures but they couldn't tell him what it meant so he finally consulted an Orthodox monk, I believe, who told him the meaning was that, "If there had been five good people in the entire City, God would not have allowed it to fall".
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