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I am with you, I fail to understand what white identity even means, what could this group of people possibly have in common culturally.
The reality of the modern world is that it's cut a lot of people adrift from feeling rooted, although with history this was often the case also. Religion, nationality filled the void and created a sense of identity, but they too have fallen away. Modernism together with liberalism created a secular kind of identity that reached its zenith with neoliberalism and the end of history ideas, but that too has fallen by the wayside. We forgot that the conditions of a liberal society are downstream of culture and so fell into the current strand of progressive authoritarianism or neo-Marxism.
The question, if you have not already committed to some ethno-nationalist tribalism, is what next. Here are the parameters as I see it:
We have lost religion but secularism could never take its place so we have religiosity appearing as cult like ideologies.
We have philosophical relativism combined with postmodernism expressed as a superficial liberalism run amok. No, not everyone's thinking is equal - we can privilege good thinking over poor thinking and we desperately need to.
We need to reintroduce economics into discourse so we can agree across racial lines and make race less salient. Aren't a lot of poor whites just victims of changing economics and policy?
We need to stop believing simplistic narratives while at the same time being able to talk freely about things without being projected on for taboo topics. We should be able to critique aspects of different cultures without race necessarily coming into it.
We're actually in an exciting time, on the cusp of changes. It's no surprise religion is being talked about as part of the solution, even as less people profess belief in traditional religions. The secular, materialist, modernist frame has been too flat, it has run its course. This of course doesn't mean we abandon it's best elements and turn ourselves into a postmodern mush, we desperately need a scientific mindset, but it does mean we need to look beyond.
Also, I think there is a growing appreciation for elements of conservatism and self-sovereignty. Culture exists for a reason and we can't just cut it out of whole cloth - there are actually things worth preserving. We need to challenge decadent thinking and reorient to families and child development rather than how to construct a world that entertains rootless adults.
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