To understand the “Great Replacement,” we must first understand the idea of nationalism. According to British Historian Elie Kedourie, the doctrine of nationalism holds that “humanity is naturally divided into nations, that nations are known by certain characteristics which can be ascertained, and that the only legitimate type of government is national self-government.”

“Nationalism,” as an ideology, is a recent newcomer to the history of ideas, making its first appearance in English in 1798. Both absolute monarchists and enlightenment philosophes were supporters of the new ideology. Nationalism was hailed in a book by that enlightened despot, Frederick the Great and in the theorists of the French Revolution. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen also supports the idea of nationalism.  Article 3 states “The principle of sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation; no body of men, no individual, can exercise authority that does not emanate expressly from it.”

Today, nationalism takes on many forms. Hans Kohn, the seminal thinker on Nationalism in the 20^th century distinguished two major expressions: 1) civic nationalism and 2) ethnic nationalism. According to Stefan Auer, “civic nationalism,” also known as liberal nationalism, is an inclusive form of nationalism that adheres to traditional liberal values of freedom, tolerance, equality, individual rights, while, on the other hand, “ethnic nationalism” is a form of nationalism wherein the nation and nationality are defined in terms of ethnicity. It is this latter form of nationalism with which we are most familiar.

Nineteenth Century Europe saw the emergence of strong movements to consolidate and unify areas of nations divided by the prevailing borders. In particular, the three most powerful emerging nations in Europe (France, Italy and Germany) were politically divided and subject to the predations of stronger powers. Italy, for example, despite its cultural successes, was divided into a number of states controlled by Austria, Spain, France and the Pope. In Italy and much of Europe most of the 19th century was marked by both unification and revolution (supplanting absolute monarchies by liberal democracies).

In the twentieth century, ethno-nationalism was immediately responsible for the onset of World War I, as the multi-ethnic Austrian Empire was doomed to break apart into what we now recognize as nation-states.  The following quote from Hans Kohn sheds critical light on where we stand today:

Nationalism is a state of mind permeating the large majority of the people and claiming to permeate all its members; it recognized the nation-state as the ideal form of political organization and the nationality as the source of all creative cultural energy and economic well-being. The supreme loyalty of man is therefore due to his nationality, as his own life is supposedly rooted and made possible by its welfare.

Hans Kohn was one of my professors, and his views were controversial at the time. Most political scientists saw international conflict as an ideological conflict (this was the time of the Cold War). But Kohn saw the bedrock psychological importance of the idea of the nation. He would not have been surprised at the breakup of the Soviet Union, nor at the emergence of Russian nationalism (he died well before these events in 1971).

But nationalism is no longer limited to international relations. As modern countries are less identified with a dominant national group, the power of the idea of the nation has fueled groups within a nation to seek out a “national” identity. This is true of Scots in England, Croats in Yugoslavia, and white males in America. These strains of ethnic identity among disaffected sub-groups driven by a psychology of disappointment and discouragement that are dispelled by belonging to an exclusive group. Thus, we see streams of white nationalist young men adopting Nazi symbols, marching through Charlottesville, chanting “Jews shall not replace us.”

We shall turn to the Great Replacement Theory in our next post