CHRISTIANITY & WESTERN MAN

 by Andy Nowicki

In his thought-provoking article “The Rise of Anti-Western Christianity,” Matthew Roberts boldly tackles a subject which has become a source of vexing, contentious, and at times bitter debate among the various factions which make up the contemporary alternative Right.

Indeed, the discussion which played out in the comment section accompanying Roberts’ piece at AltRight is illustrative, in that it reflects the typical trajectory of the rancorous back-and-forth one commonly overhears among those who, while sharing a common sense of disgust with the Zeitgeist’s relentless ideological war on whiteness, have differing outlooks regarding the Christian religion and its supposed culpability in this course of events.

Unfortunately, as all too often happens in the heat of a fierce debate, subtlety of argument and nuance of thought tend to go by the wayside for favor of flailing rhetorical broadstrokes and ill-conceived strawman assertions. Self-styled “race realists” have long been at the receiving end of such logically fallacious ripostes, most of which boil down to some variation on the following: “You believe in inherent genetic racial differences? Then you’re no better than HITLER!”

It need hardly be pointed out that recognizing divergent levels of intelligence among racial groups has no necessary correlation with advocating tyranny and genocide. Yet this fact never seems to sway those who fling such accusations at dissenters from the Zeitgeist’s enshrined and requisite doctrine of racial egalitarianism. This glaring nonsequitur is, in fact, formulated almost automatically, in breathtaking defiance of common sense. And one can sympathize with race-realists in this regard (who are outrageously saddled with the moral baggage of historical mass murder)… if not for the unfortunate fact that many of them have a proclivity to be just as incautious in their dismissal of the Christian faith.

Indeed, it is often said that Christianity’s universalist creed is somehow an inherent impediment to a Westerner’s healthy drive to embrace and take pride in his own heritage. In fact, if looked at properly, it is precisely the catholic (with a small “c”) orientation of the Church that lends moral legitimacy to the appropriate ethno-racial perspective. Absent the anchor of faith, and the accompanying notions of natural law and justice, one founders on nihilism, an outlook which in no time leads into the maelstrom of terror and chaos.

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First off, however, it must be admitted that Phillip Jenkins, author of The Next Christendom, is very much a product of his age, in that he takes racial indifferentism as a matter of course. There are no really notable or significant differences between the white man, the black man, the yellow man, the red man, and the brown man, he seems to think—all races are perfectly interchangeable, one with the other.

Interchangeable with Europe?

Roberts does not misrepresent Jenkins’ rather glib and flippant indifference to the crisis of faith in the West. He correctly notes, in fact, that Jenkins pretty much shrugs at the Third World-ization of Christianity and the ongoing demographic and religious collapse of the West. In this sense, Jenkins has much in common with both “liberal” and ostensibly “conservative” wings of contemporary Western Christendom, both of which have enthusiastically embraced the race-neutral perspective in every regard (since to do otherwise would mean to be “just like Hitler”; see above).

But even if such a perspective is ubiquitous in our age, it ought not be concluded that the origin of this mindset is the universalistic creed of Christianity. After all, the Christian faith has existed for nearly two millennia, and only in the last half-century has its creed been construed in such a manner. In truth, while Christian doctrine does, indeed, believe in the equal spiritual status of all races (all men having been fashioned in the image and likeness of God), it in no sense maintains the interchangeability of one race with another, or the desirability of different races dwelling together, that is, multiculturalism. Just as the Church has always maintained that men and women, while each loved by God, are different, and ideally designed to play different roles, so there is nothing in the Christian creed which insists that, as über-douche Bono once warbled, “all the colors will bleed into one.” Indeed, while “people are people” (as the somewhat less douche-y but still annoying Depeche Mode singer informed us), common sense and simple observation helps one to see that differences between us are at least as notable and significant as our similarities.

What is more, it is only through a transcendentalist creed like Christianity that one is enabled to advocate for justice for one’s own people, because only a transcendent, universalist perspective gives one the obligation to stand up for what is right, good, and proper. Racial advocacy in the absence of such clear-cut moral precepts inevitably becomes arbitrary notions that undermine themselves.

Let us return to the oft-cited Hitler here to discuss the perfect example of this short-sighted ideological tactic…

In Mein Kampf, the mustachioed one thunders against the “November criminals” whom, he believed, betrayed his country at the end of World War I. He also inveighs against the harsh and vindictive terms of the Versailles treaty, which seemed to be designed specially to humiliate Germans. And, of course, he rails against the Jews, calling them (among other things) wanton, cruel, deceitful, and untrustworthy.

Let us leave behind the question of whether Hitler’s claims about the November criminals, the Versailles treaty, and the perfidious nature of the Jews were true or false; let’s assume for argument’s sake, in fact, that they are, in fact, all true. Hitler seems to be making the point that his people have been treated unfairly, and deserve redress. This is well and good… but then Hitler’s patently atheistic and social Darwinist views seem to undermine whatever moral case could have been made against the legitimate grievances he expressed previously. Germany needs to crush its enemies, and show no mercy—weakness must not be tolerated, ever, at any juncture—Might Makes Right—the strong dominate the weak—such is the way of nature.

Well, if these things are so, one might ask the angry Austrian autobiographer, then why should anyone care that Germany was humiliated? Why be angry with the Jew for allegedly seeking the German’s destruction, when the German would just as soon do the same thing to the Jew if their situations were reversed?

In other words, where is the claim to justice? And indeed, in the wake of the devastation of World War II, why are we supposed to shed crocodile tears for battered, bombed-out Dresden, for the victims of merciless Allied aerial raids on civilian centers in Hamburg and Berlin and elsewhere? How can we, why should we feel the least bit sorry for Germany, following Hitler’s own Nietzschian-Darwinian-derived worship of ruthless strength? After all, the stronger force always wins out in the end anyway, or else it couldn’t very well be called “stronger,” could it?

The Christian conception of things is quite different. It insists, not that might makes right, but that a just cause is a just cause, whether it be temporally triumphant or not. If a nation or a race is oppressed, then it has valid grounds to seek redress. Just as individuals possess the inherent dignity of being children of God, so does a particular subset of humanity. Thus, Whites, like any other race of men, are not enjoined to suffer being humiliated, run down, insulted, or be forced into dispossession of their inheritance.

The notion that Christianity makes white Westerners into meek little lambs fit for racial dilution, if not slaughter, is thus a crass and ill-informed misconception. For it is in the context of Christianity—or some other universal vision of humanity and human justice—that white advocates can be sure of the worthiness of their cause.

Of course, Christian doctrine also warns us not to mistreat other peoples, just as we would demand not to be mistreated ourselves. If some would chafe against this restraint as somehow weak and unmanly, let us remember that the alternative (“might makes right”) has much more potential to backfire badly if our side suffers a temporal setback. Christianity enjoins all people and all races to be mindful of justice, regardless of who is strong and who is weak. One need not jettison racial pride or preference for one’s own ethnic particularity to comprehend the wisdom of precisely such a universalist perspective.