How White Supremacism Outflanked Liberalism

Whilst watching a rather nasty video on the YouTube channel RobinHoodUKIP recently, I came across the following comment:
‘“I am proud of my Black identity” said the proud Black.
“I am proud of my Asian culture” said the proud Asian.
“I am proud of my White heritage” said the racist.’
This comment, for all ignorance of its terminology, is a very useful little statement, for it sums up the paradox of modern white supremacism.
It is already clear that white supremacism and Nazism in the twenty-first century exhibit some differences from their twentieth-century counterparts. These go beyond the embarrassing farce of their obsession with Japanese cartoons and various amphibian characters. Certainly, much of the new white supremacism is a regurgitation of the same old material: the idea that inherent differences make it impossible for the races to co-exist in single nations, that the white race is innately superior to the others, that liberal governments are conspiring with other races to wipe out the white race (so-called ‘white genocide’). But there is a new element here as well: white supremacism has, bizarrely, absorbed one of the central tenets of progressive internationalism.
Historians talk about the need to ‘provincialise Europe’ — that is, speaking and write about the European continent as a region of the world whose practices are no superior to any other. The concept is based on a recognition that we must no longer define the world outside Europe by the degree of its conformity to European standards. ‘Provincialising Europe’ means understanding Europe as a subjective entity which followed one particular trajectory out of multiple possible ones, not as an objective force by which everything else is defined.
The same practice can be applied to social groupings. Efforts to strip society of the so-called ‘male gaze’ are an example of the burgeoning drive to provincialise masculinity, historically the standard by which women were patronised for irrationality, gay men condemned as aberrations (and lesbians initially ignored, more recently fetishised). There have also been attempts to reorientate society away from an assumption of white objectivity. But, entirely counter-intuitively, white supremacists have been some of the most forceful exponents of the provincialisation of white people, by insisting that white people, whatever that may be, be treated in the same way as other racial groups.
To an extent, this self-provincialisation has been a deliberate development. Richard Spencer has explicitly acknowledged the influence of identity politics on the alt-right’s tactics, seeking to outflank the liberal left with their own arguments. Spencer frequently describes a wholly white state as a “safe space” for white people. Others have picked up the same theme: alt-right useful idiot Milo Yiannopoulos sets up a grant for white men applying to university. These people reject the term ‘white supremacist’ because they want to appear to be demanding no more than equality — though their insistence that this can only be achieved in ethnically homogeneous states, plus their refusal to acknowledge white privilege, easily give the lie to this thin veneer. Nonetheless, it is very significant that the new white supremacists have adopted this tactic: by utilising the language of liberalism, they believe they can expose it as hypocritical.
But in seeking to outflank liberalism, this brand of white supremacism has in fact conceded what was historically their greatest weapon: the assumption of white objectivity. The notion that whiteness is the objective state of being, from which everything else deviates, has always been the bulwark ofwhite supremacism. It thrived on a vision of the West and the white race as the transcendent political, cultural, and economic centre of the world, with all other regions existing only in relation to it. If whiteness is defined as a universal norm, then all other cultures are inherently subordinate to it.
Unfortunately, modern liberalism, particularly internationalist liberalism, has inadvertently got itself tangled in this ideology precisely in its efforts to avoid the appearance of bigotry. Liberals make earnest, and of course entirely laudable, efforts to honour and to elevate elements of Indian, or South American, or Chinese cultural and intellectual achievement, specifically as achievements of those peoples. But it would feel very unnatural, and indeed potentially politically incorrect, to identify, say, Romanticism as a European achievement. This presents us, however, with a serious problem. If it is not a European achievement, then by implication it must be a universal achievement. Are Native American dances to be compartmentalised as a Native American accomplishment, while Beethoven is a global one? European achievements are objective ones whereas other regions can only create their own achievements? This is Western exceptionalism at its most subtle and pervasive, and it is at the very heart of liberalism.
Paradoxically, it is, then, elements of the far right who have most thoroughly imbibed the ‘provincialising Europe’ narrative. They are, however, using it in the most unsavoury way. They behave as if Europe as an idea, a culture, and (very vaguely) as a people, is already a province but one lacking in content, a fact that they ascribe to the supposed oppression it faces from its own leaders and from what they regard as the elevation of other cultures by and within it.
But the reality is that if ‘Europe’ is lacking in content, it is because we are unwilling to cite cultural phenomena which took place in Europe as European ones, for fearing of appearing arrogant or racist. We have therefore given white supremacists carte blanche to fill in the content of Europe themselves, which they have done with no respect for real history. They will talk at length about European nations’ supposed creation of democratic structures and technological achievements, without considering how European politics and invention were influenced by the rest of the world and influenced them in their turn.
Intellectually, we must combat the growing hold of white supremacism over people’s minds by creating a less bigoted form of provincial Europe, answering directly the feeling that Europe is not permitted its own space in the world. This provincial Europe should recognise Europeans’ achievements and place them in the context of intellectual exchange between European cultures and, equally essentially, with other cultures. It should also recognise the deficiencies of policy and the deliberate atrocities committed by Europeans in the past, as well as the policies by which Europe and the wider West continue to impose their will on the Global South. But it should not be considered to do so as a transcendent giant representing either justice or evil, but merely as another self-interested economic and political entity with inflated power over others. While we wait for this, don’t forget to combat white supremacism by going out and punching Nazis.
