Editor: Yesterday, in response to a challenge to clearly define pro-white nationalism and demonstrate how we are to avoid tragedies of the past, we published a work by Moses Apostaticus defining Australia as an Anglo-Celtic nation. Today, we encore this essay by David Hiscox, originally published January 23, 2017. This article represents a crucial turning point in his transition from civic nationalist to ethnic nationalist. Crucially, he demonstrates how pro-white nationalism was not the cause of WW2, but was actually the key motivator to defeat the socialism which started it, although he could have gone to greater lengths to stress the role of the USSR in sparking the conflict.
Flanked by the Romanesque colonnades of the Felsenreitschule theatre in Graz, Austria, Captain Baron von Trapp announces to the audience that he will not be seeing them again. To assure his Austrian compatriots of his allegiance to them, and not to the German national socialists, he sings them a “love song.”
The love in question is his love for his country, Austria. The song is Edelweiss, a beautiful tribute to the white, national flower, and in the simple triple style of the classic Austrian dance, the waltz. I can’t help but tear up every time I hear it, thanks to its melody, and because I love watching people express their love for their country so naturally.
It is the second time in the movie The Sound of Music that the Captain has performed Edelweiss. Earlier, when he was gently cajoled into singing it by his family, it serves as a crucial plot point – Baron von Trapp’s eyes set on Maria and he cannot avert his gaze. The beautiful Maria, whose conservative yet coquettish blue dress hides a supple figure bursting to fully express the hidden de… wait a minute, where was I, oh yes… It is the moment that it becomes clear to all and sundry that the Captain is in love with Maria, who, well, “will never be a nun….”
What really puts shivers down my spine is that the second time it is sung, Eidelweiss takes on a new, more urgent meaning. The Captain and Maria are now devoted in marriage, and are determined to leave everything behind in order to maintain their freedom, given the only alternative is for Baron von Trapp to serve in the German navy. (Knowing the future poverty their family would experience in the United States, this is indeed a momentous decision, to choose uncertainty over a comfortable prison). What follows are some of the tensest scenes of the movie, which are for an 8-year-old, just the right level of scary.
So, having performed the frivolous (yet foundational, in terms of music theory) Do, a Deer, at the 1930s National Socialist Greater Germany’s equivalent of Australian Idol, Baron Von Trapp takes his chance to defy his national socialist captors, and perform the Waltzing Matilda equivalent of Austria. By that stage in the movie and in real life, Austria had been annexed into Greater Germany, cemented by a mock plebiscite in which the Austrian population was manipulated and intimidated into countenancing their own defeat. Thus, to express the independent national spirit of Austria was to threaten the unity of national socialist Germany.
Moreover, it directly challenged the legitimacy of Adolf Hitler as German Fuhrer – the Austrian Hitler, along with many of his compatriots, desired a reunification of Austria and Germany. If Austria was in fact an independent nation, then Hitler was in fact an outsider and an usurper. Thus the stakes for Von Trapp, in singing Edelweiss, could not be higher.
As he starts, the German national socialists in the front row give off an air of menacing impatience, while the ever-opaque Uncle Max momentarily betrays a sense of apprehension before steeling himself against whatever may come. As the Captain gets to the second verse, his voice, until now so manful and decisive, starts to waver. It is at that moment that Maria Von Trapp, in perfect time, comes over to support her husband, followed quickly by his adoring children, and they lead the entire audience in a climactic chorus.
As we chuckle at the momentary discomfort of the national socialists in the front row, who play a reverse version of this guy, and admire the bravery of the von Trapps, dressed in their traditional Austrian mountain gear, one observation becomes unavoidable:
One could not get a more glaring example of traditional family values and open, undiluted white nationalism if you tried.
The principle of nationalism asserts that people who share a common ethnic, cultural or religious bond, and who have a history of living in a certain geographic region, have the right to live independently of other nations or outside powers, according to how they see fit. If democracy is government by the people, for the people, where the people of a nation may live according to how they choose, then nationalism is democracy applied to international relations. Give over sovereignty to another nation, or to a higher supranational power, and the democratic right of a nation, and hence its people, is diminished.
This is important, because since the end of World War 2, and particularly in recent decades, the definition of nationalism has been deliberately altered to mean the assertion of national or ethnic chauvinism, the belief that one’s nation has the right to exploit or conquer another because one’s nation is better, and to view other races as inferior; essentially, to equate nationalism with racism.
This racism, this stated intent to deny the democratic rights of people of other nations to live independently abroad, was combined with socialist policies at home, by the national socialists of Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. The national socialists stole wealth from one group, the Jews, to redistribute to others, the Germans. Business needed strong ties to the central government if it was to survive. (Sticklers will call this form of socialism “corporatism,” or “crony capitalism,” but free market economics it most certainly was not. It is a fact that corporatism sits very comfortably to the left on the socialist continuum.) A cult of personality worshipped Adolf Hitler, the media toed the line of the all-powerful, totalitarian state, and secret police ensured any thoughts of dissent were kept private or secret.
Likewise, the international socialists of the Soviet Union from 1917 onward stole from one class, the producers, to give to another, those who did not. Business and industry was, in time, fully nationalised, cults of personality worshipped successive leaders, and the state-controlled media altered or erased history when one previous cult of personality became a little problematic.
Both the national socialists of Germany and the international socialists of the Soviet Union imprisoned millions of their citizens for who they were or what they believed, and slaughtered millions. At this, the Soviet Union’s international socialists far surpassed their German national socialist cousins.
Between them, they started World War 2. Communists the world over, believing that Hitler was their ally, sabotaged the war effort against Germany; for example, labour unions instituted rolling strikes, and France capitulated precipitously (…well, at least, more than usual…). Regardless of the ultimate motives of both sides in signing the German-Soviet Non-aggression Pact, socialists the world over believed Hitler to be on their side.
This is very important. “Progressives” of every stripe insist that it was the Russian military which defeated the “Nazis” in “The Great Patriotic War.” (What’s that, socialists using the term “patriotic” to refer to a war….) This is not without justification, but it is a complete distortion of history. In reality, World War Two was a competition between national socialist Germany and international socialist Russia over who would dominate Europe, and indeed the world. The democratic West chose to side with the international socialists against the national socialists. In hindsight, it would have been no more morally repugnant to side with national socialist Germany to defeat the international socialist USSR.
At the official end of WW2, half of Europe would still be enslaved for another forty years, and all life on earth was threatened, either with communist invasion or nuclear holocaust. Millions more were murdered by socialists in the ensuing four decades it took to defeat them. In this context, the years from the start of World War Two (or even from World War One, or at least from 1917) until the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, can be seen as a near century-long war by the free market, democratic, nationalist West to defeat the totalitarian threat of socialism.
But the Cultural Marxists in Western media and universities have managed to retell this story, so as to cover their tracks. In reality, the socialists started WW2, and the nationalist desire of the people of Europe defeated it. But this narrative has been turned on its head; according to Cultural Marxists, the nationalist “Nazis” started WW2, and socialist Russia won it. Likewise, the story of the Cold War has been retold, so that the brave, worldwide anti-communist resistance to the expansionist USSR and PRC has been presented as a series of crimes by the imperialist United States.
This distortion of Europe’s history, of world history, to make the villains the heroes and the heroes the villains, is bad enough. But now, the false connection of nationalism with racism could potentially rob Europe of its future. It has become verboten to assert pride in one’s nation, to celebrate nationalism. The association of nationalism, rather than socialism, with the racism of Adolf Hitler, now means that any policy, any idea, any utterance which does not conform with the multicultural, anti-white, anti-European socialist agenda of Cultural Marxists (which by extension is inextricably linked to the genocidal policies of the USSR) is automatically labelled racist, and is automatically linked to the genocidal policies of national socialist Germany.
Those who push for even greater centralisation of power in the EU, and greater erosion of national sovereignty, argue that this is essential, or otherwise the nationalism of Europe will cause another European war. In so doing, they present the cause of World War Two as its solution; they demonise the strongest opposition to the cause of World War Two as itself being the cause; and in attempting to disintegrate national identity in Europe, sabotage the demographic future of Europe, and open its borders to invasion to an alien people bearing an alien philosophy, thus laying the foundations of World War Three.
Let us return then, to the image of a white, heterosexual family, clothed in their national dress, singing about a white flower. To the average SJW of today, (hell, to the average college radical of the 1970s) it is the epitome of fascism, and must be subverted, deconstructed and destroyed.
Consider the lyrics of Eidelweiss:
Edelweiss, edelweiss
Every morning you greet me
Small and white
Clean and bright
You look happy to meet me
Blossom of snow
May you bloom and grow
Bloom and grow forever
Edelweiss, edelweiss
Bless my homeland forever
So few words, so many triggers..
The Sound of Music is could be Exhibit A in a comparative study in how the dominant paradigm in Western culture and philosophy has been turned on its head in the last 50 years. The symbolism of Eidelweiss, when performed in The Sound of Music, is drenched in opposition to collectivist, expansionist, racist, genocidal, globalist totalitarianism. This is precisely why the left have fought so hard to revise (i.e., lie about) the real history of World War Two and its cause:
They started it.
It is why now, in 2017, it is so crucial to challenge this left-wing narrative, because this year the people of Europe have the opportunity to change course, to start applying the real lessons of World War Two – which are that appeasement always leads to facing a stronger enemy in the long run, and that the nationalism of free people will always beat totalitarianism – and potentially avoid the left’s goal, which is the destruction of Europe.
I will leave you with the words of Baron Von Trapp to the tragic figure that is Rolf Gruber. In one of the last scenes in The Sound of Music, we watch a final confrontation between a man who possesses total commitment to his country, and a man-child who has sold his country, and his soul, to the invading totalitarians:
“You’ll never be one of them”.
It would also be wise to heed the outcome of this exchange.