Are Americans 'Europeans'?
There is an old joke. A dad joke. Perhaps you’ve heard it. It goes something like this: If you’re an American in the kitchen, what are you in the bathroom? European!
Whether your reaction to that joke is to chuckle or to cringe, the fact is there is actually a surprising profundity behind it. Does changing one’s location change one’s identity?
We live in an age of relentless deconstructionism. In film and literature, the hero has long been subject to deconstruction. Masculinity and femininity have of course been deconstructed so thoroughly that the ravenous deconstructors have moved on to deconstructing the biological reality of male and female sexes. Perhaps nothing has been deconstructed more, however, than the concept of racial and ethnic identity.
In this zeitgeist of taking apart things to see what they’re made of (and then having no clue how to put them back together), the White race has come under most scrutiny. ‘What does it even mean to be white?’ asks the deconstructionist, always writing ‘white’ with a lower-case w. Curiously, the deconstructionist himself is in possession of the answer to his own question, if and when the topic of ‘White Privilege’ arises. In that case, suddenly there is no confusion at all as to who is White and what it means.
This same smug question can be and is adapted for more specific identities as well. ‘What does it mean to be English? Who even are the British people? What does it mean to be Italian? What does it mean to be French? Who are the Irish exactly?’ The question is always meant to attack those native Europeans who desire their nations to remain as they have been for centuries, indeed millennia, and to justify the transformation of these nations via mass replacement migration into something entirely unrecognisable. The question is asked in bad faith. It is an increasingly overt attempt to reduce European national identities to a mere delusion, a ‘social construct’ from bygone and irrelevant times. The fact that these questions are never put before Asians, Africans, Israelis, or anyone else, makes the intent behind them rather obvious.
That said, in a globalised world this question, when asked in good faith, is not completely useless or malevolent. In fact it is quite a necessary question to ask. Thankfully, the answer is usually simple. Anthropology and modern genetic research have given us a lot of information to work with. Who are the Irish? They are a northwestern European people, native to the island of Ireland, descended from the indigenous Gaelic-speaking Celtic tribes. Who are the British? They are also a northwestern European people, who can be more precisely identified as Welsh, Cornish, Scottish, and English. Who are the French? They are a western European ethnic group, descended first and foremost from the Gauls and Germanic tribes such as the Franks, with a bit of Roman and Celtic mixed in too. These definitions sufficed up until their specificity and, worse (from a progressive liberal’s perspective), exclusivity, became ‘problematic’ for the globalist desire of a world with no borders, no nations, just global citizens consuming product in meaninglessly distinct economic zones. However, the definitions I just gave for the Irish, the British, and the French, are almost word for word the definitions given on Wikipedia. Despite all the attempts at deconstruction, and the attempts to revise these definitions so that they fall in line with inclusive ways of describing a nation, these definitions remain commonplace today. Because they are true. The deconstructors ultimately end up making a mockery of themselves. In their attempt to delegitimise European identities, they fly their time machines so far back into the past that they end up deconstructing pre-historic humanoid species. Perhaps they should fly even further back in time and set their analytical minds to deconstructing the identities of the creatures who evolved out of the primordial waters!
I said that the answer to the question ‘what does it even mean to be X?’ is usually simple because there are indeed nations for whom the response is a bit more complicated. Here we get to the motivation for this essay and its titular query. Recently, Lana Lokteff of Red Ice fame posted the following on her Twitter account:
It always irritates me when White people in America, Canada, New Zealand, & Australia don’t think of themselves as Europeans! Our ancestors came from Europe. We are Europeans. Further, the nations of our race founded outside of Europe are still European. You aren’t just White, you are European. Europe is home to 80+ distinct ethnic groups of which we White folks come from. Yes we are ethnic, diverse, and unique.
This prompted my friend and renowned appreciator of all things Dissident Right, Gaddius Maximus, to respond in respectful disagreement.
Americans aren’t Europeans. The vast majority of us only care about our ancestors (blood) as far back as when they first set foot on this continent (soil). That’s usually when our family story (myth) begins.
He also followed that tweet with another one, which stated with honesty and clarity the difference between Gaddius’ view and Lana’s.
I haven’t sent my spit to Google or the Mormons yet, but I’m fairly certain the results would come back a large percentage from the British Isles. Probably Scotland & England predominantly. Because of this I have great affinity for that part of the world but for me to claim it somehow makes me ‘British’ doesn’t really seem to pass the smell test. I hold the same view for concepts like ‘European’ unless we’re talking in the broadest possible biological sense.
Gaddius then conducted a poll across Telegram and Twitter asking people if they considered Americans to be Europeans. The responses in the comments are expected, but still interesting. Many people took that ‘broadest possible biological sense’ approach and asserted that, as ‘White people’ (a term which I have often expressed my displeasure in using, but will use in this essay because I have also argued that it works as a shorthand when speaking about American demography), Americans and Europeans are the same, or at least, Americans are descendants of Europeans or an extension of Europeans. Others had questions regarding the importance of things like a nation’s ‘soul’ or its behavioural and psychic differences. Others asked, in a good faith way, what was meant by ‘European’.
Because I consider myself a European, because I grew up in the US, and because these kinds of questions are the very reasons why I decided to create the Pox Populi persona in the first place, I will add some of my own experiences and observations regarding this topic.
While the results of Gaddius’ poll, as of writing this, show that 48% of American respondents agree that Americans are Europeans, I believe this is reflective only of online ethno-nationalists. If the question ‘Are Americans Europeans?’ were put to the average American normie, I think the response would probably be a raised eyebrow, a bemusedly open mouth, and, finally, a resounding ‘NO’.
This also brings us to the uncomfortable (for some) reality that the American nation is not one of those nations who can be defined as easily as the Irish or the French. Leaving aside the matter of who the United States was originally intended for (White persons of good character! White persons of good character!), the America of today is a prospect nation. It is a passport nation. So rather than responding to the poll with the question ‘what do you mean by European?’ it’s more useful to ask ‘what do you mean by American?’