Eurowhiteness: Tradition, Empire and Race within the European Undertaking
Hans Kundnani
Hurst Publishers, 2023
Eurowhiteness is a type of books that instantly catches the eye of a “racist”. With a vibrant orange cowl and a title like Eurowhiteness displayed in massive block letters, how might it not? Curiosity compelled me to take it down from the bookshop shelf and browse the introductory remarks. After a quick Google search to substantiate my suspicions of the mixed-race origins of the creator, I used to be able to groan and roll my eyes at what I assumed to be a vapid ebook that deconstructed European id by arguing that “blackness” or “brownness” one way or the other has simply as a lot place inside Europe as “whiteness.” What emerged from its pages as a substitute was a novel left-wing polemic in opposition to the European Union (EU) *as a result of* of its perceived Whiteness.
Writer Hans Kundnani was born to an Indian father and a Dutch mom and grew up in the UK. As with most mixed-race individuals who battle to position their id, he believes this background offers him a singular perspective on European historical past and id. His first post-university job was for the Fee for Racial Equality, the enforcement physique established by the UK Race Relations Act 1976, and by 2009 he was working for the European Council on International Relations, a assume tank devoted to Pan-European concepts. As Kundnani describes it, Eurowhiteness is the fruits of his shift in pondering from a pro-European satisfied of the ethical good of the EU, to a critic who has deserted the myths that when knowledgeable his worldview.
Kundnani doesn’t current a bibliography, however his ideological debt to main thinkers in crucial race and post-colonial concept is clear. His endnotes draw from well-known figures on this sphere akin to Charles W. Mills, Gurminder Okay. Bhambra, Paul Gilroy, and historic forebears Frantz Fanon and W.E.B Du Bois. The acknowledgements part reveals Kundnani’s “explicit debt” to Swedish post-colonial scholar Peo Hansen. Hansens’ ebook Eurafrica, which explores the African strategic fantasies of early Pan-European thinkers — notably Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi — are what seemingly started Kundnani’s path in the direction of euroscepticism.
Eurowhiteness is well-paced and I can provide no criticism of Kundnani’s cogent writing model. Different reviewers have affixed the phrase “difficult” to the ebook, however to these of us not inflicted with colour-blind pondering and who already see the intrinsic hyperlink between Western civilisation and the White race, the themes parsed out in Kundnani’s ebook are hardly trigger for discomfort. His declare that the EU has just lately taken a “civilisational flip” in the direction of the safety of European id and that consequently the establishment might simply as simply be used as a car for racist functions can be acquainted. Means again in 2017 Richard Spencer was pouring chilly water on the euphoria over the Brexit vote, arguing that the European Union might as a substitute grow to be a possible racial empire, a counter to NATO and Atlanticism.
The worth of this ebook for readers of The Occidental Observer lies principally in understanding the mental journey of the creator and discerning the potential for the emergence of a well-liked left-wing critique of the EU within the Anglosphere and past. Kundnani’s transition from EU booster to EU sceptic is instructive, in addition to revealing the anti-White views and motivations that may lie behind soft-spoken teachers. Regardless of the myriad of anti-racist measures, tolerance initiatives, and hate speech legal guidelines that embody the fashionable EU, Kundnani has turned on the European Union as a result of it’s simply nonetheless too White, too Western. In spite of everything, the EU’s historical past is rooted in Europe and far of its historic and present-day motivations are the defence of European folks and Western values. That alone is sufficient to condemn it in Kundnani’s eyes.
Regionalist Racism
Kundnani’s critique of the European Union begins with the dismantling of what he sees is the widespread misunderstanding of its structural nature. Moderately than conceptualising it as an inclusive cosmopolitan venture that has renounced nationalism — a place held by each supporters on the left and critics on the proper — Kundnani assaults the EU as a venture analogous to nationalism. In accordance with Kundnani, it’s higher understood as a type of “regionalism.” That’s, nationalism on a extra continental scale, and imbued with all the identical chauvinistic impulses, energy dynamics and histories of colonial dispossession that nation-states are saddled with. The identical impulse in the direction of nation-building is discovered within the ‘region-building’ of the EU.
Constructing on this idea of regionalism as nationalism on a bigger scale, Kundnani attracts upon Jewish tutorial Hans Kohn’s concept of nationalism. Kohn invented the idea of civic nationalism as distinct from ethnic nationalism ideally fitted to facilitating non-White migration. Simply as a nation can have strands of civic and ethnic nationalism, so too does the regionalist EU. It possesses each a civic and an ethnic part that waxes and wanes in power throughout time; secularism, civil establishments and liberal rights weighed in opposition to Christian, intolerant, civilisational and racial concepts. For Kundnani, it’s “disturbing” that the EU continues to attract upon such ethnic/cultural components from Europe’s historical past.
Chapter 2 briefly traces the historical past of European id from its ethnic and cultural origins on the time of the Battle of Excursions, the place the phrase was first utilized by the victorious Franks with the intention to “different” the exterior enemy, the Muslims. From the seventeenth century onwards, concepts of Europe started to shift from being strictly synonymous with Christianity. At this level, a rationalist, enlightenment notion of Europe with a civilising mission to the remainder of the world emerged, and eventually the notion of whiteness or the racial identification of the European peoples as Whites.
Kundnani’s critique of the Enlightenment values that type the premise of the EU follows the now commonplace deconstruction of its universalism, positing that it’s as a substitute of being based mostly in Whiteness and within the explicit methods of White supremacy:
… whereas Enlightenment concepts just like the “rights of man” — the antecedent of what we might at this time name “human rights” — have been probably common, they emerged from a selected European context, and furthermore, have been put into apply in a racialized approach. … [C]olonialism and slavery have been carried out within the title of enlightenment concepts.
The Enlightenment is introduced (or problematised, to make use of the lingo) in essentially the most debased phrases doable, because the output of White supremacists. Immanuel Kant, whom Kundnani factors out wrote an early attraction for European unity that’s now celebrated by the EU, is lambasted for his racial theories. Rousseau is condemned as a result of his writings didn’t converse on to the plight of Black slaves in French colonies.
Subsequent, the alleged colonial origins of the EU are fleshed out — the “authentic sin” of the EU as Kundnani likes to name it. Moderately than being anti-colonial, the early actions in the direction of Pan-European unity developed the idea of Eurafrica, which envisioned the African continent as a but undeveloped supply of uncooked materials for a future European power-bloc. Most of the founding states of the EU additionally held onto their colonial possessions after the formation of the European Financial Neighborhood (EEC), the formal precursor to the EU. France and Belgium particularly factored these colonies into their financial concerns for a post-war redevelopment enmeshed into wider Europe. Predatory relations additional continued after the formal independence of those colonies, within the type of exploitative labour schemes and visitor employee applications.
Kundnani argues that from 1945 onwards, civic regionalism got here to dominate as a response to the ethnic conflicts of World Battle II. This was not the clear break from Europe’s previous that many claimed it to be, with the older ethnic/cultural regionalist tendencies nonetheless pushing by way of into Pan-European rhetoric. The civilising mission remained, as did the assumption within the superiority of European values and the declare of their universality. Even the holocaust will not be spared from critique. The EU, Kundnani contends, has used holocaust remembrance as a canopy for forgetting colonial injustices, patting themselves on the again for upholding “By no means Once more” while persevering with to refuse to interact in decolonisation or recognise Europe’s true authentic sin. The foundational reminiscence of the holocaust has obscured Europe’s foundational historical past of colonialism, and thus the EU is a venture of political amnesia that has forgotten, or choses to disregard, its origins as a quasi-colonial establishment.
The top of the Chilly Battle reignited the civilising mission in the direction of incorporating the EU’s extra “backward” jap Europeans neighbours, those that have been European however not fairly but *in* Europe in cultural or political phrases. Greater than midway by way of the ebook, we lastly encounter the that means behind its title, derived from Hungarian sociologist József Böröcz, who proposed a spectrum of Whiteness inside Europe. “Eurowhitness” is related to the centre of Europe within the West and “soiled whiteness”, the much less immaculate and considerably much less West European model to the East. Kundnani repurposes the time period to seek advice from the ethnic/cultural model of European regionalist id. Eurowhiteness, used as a pejorative or a unfavorable by Kundnani, merely means to establish as European in a non-civic (that’s, “racist”) approach.
With the arrival of the Eurozone disaster in 2010 and the chaos of the refugee inflow of 2015, Kundnani argues that the European Union has swung in the direction of a defensive place, centered on countering the exterior threats to the soundness of Europe:
By the start of the 2020s, the civic ingredient of European regionalism appeared to have grow to be much less influential and the ethnic/cultural ingredient extra influential in “pro-European” pondering. In different phrases, whiteness gave the impression to be changing into extra central to the European venture.
Kundnani sees little distinction between pro-European politicians who posit a defence of the “European Means of Life” or who fear about the way forward for Western civilisation and much proper “extremists” who invoke the supposed trope of the good substitute. Within the face of those threats to EU stability, those that concern the decline of EU energy and sovereignty are the worldwide political equivalents of the those that concern White substitute. In spite of everything, each positions are “pro-European.” For Kundnani, the EU’s dramatic response to the warfare in Ukraine, opening its arms large for Ukrainian refugees in comparison with what he sees is the closed-door coverage to non-White refugees at its southern borders, is simply additional proof of the return to Eurowhiteness.
By far the weakest level of the argument is the proof (or basic lack thereof) offered to attribute Eurowhiteness motivations to present EU leaders or bureaucrats. As an outsider, the civic European part nonetheless appears predominant and the appeals to European civilisation are mere scraps thrown to a public more and more disillusioned by the failure of the EU to reply to problems with mass immigration. It seems like a stretch to broadly attribute chauvinistic views to the EU management, however the impulse to defend Europe as Europe, as some type of distinct entity of a definite group of individuals, does actually exist sufficient for the label of Eurowhiteness to stay.
Kundnani believes {that a} totally different Europe is required than the one we presently have. Nearing the conclusion, he briefly hints on the EU itself being a barrier to overcoming Eurowhiteness. He claims that partaking with its colonial previous might in actual fact be a hazard to the EU as a result of Japanese European member states with no colonial historical past or collective guilt over colonialism would resist such initiatives, which might in flip have a disintegrative impact on European establish and the construction of the EU. Nonetheless, the narrative abruptly ends there and isn’t additional expounded upon, and we’re left questioning what his true emotions about the way forward for the EU are. Kundnani a minimum of admits within the introduction that he’s solely providing critiques, not options — a minimum of not for the EU.
Reconsidering Brexit
The ultimate chapter, Brexit and Imperial Amnesia, modifications gears and presents us with a revisionist account of the Brexit Referendum, aimed on the British left nonetheless reeling from the 2016 vote. Kundnani challenges the dominant narrative of the Go away vote as a racist vote craving for a White fortress that shuts the door to migrants. The true nature of the Brexit vote is introduced as extra complicated and fewer binary, highlighting that one in three members of Britian’s ethnic minority inhabitants additionally voted to depart. Kundnani expands upon the angst of many non-White Britons concerning the EU and their notion that continental Europe remains to be extra racist than the UK. Given the persistence of Eurowhiteness, it remained exhausting for Britain’s Black and Asian populations to actually really feel a part of the European venture and so they have struggled to establish with its historical past. Kundnani can be captive of those feeling in the direction of the EU, mentioning within the introduction that he might by no means convey himself to really feel “100% European” as a result of his mixed-race background.
One other space of hostility outlined in the direction of the EU is the discrimination many felt from the modifications that entrance into the venture dropped at immigration. Following the admission of the UK into the EEC, Commonwealth residents from Britain’s former colonies all of a sudden discovered it was tougher to enter the UK than continental Europeans. The story is acquainted to Australians, who too felt deserted by the mom nation when the border management strains on the airport now not privileged the peoples of New Brittania.
With the Brexit vote reconceptualised, the Go away determination is reworked into a possibility, providing the possibility for Britain to rebalance its id. Eurowhiteness and ties to the EU have allowed the UK to flee from its colonial historical past by specializing in the nationwide id narratives of Europe and World Battle II. By way of engagement with former colonies, Britain can shift its nationwide story away from Europe. Right here, within the last two paragraphs of the ebook, we lastly come to the car of this reimagining of Britain and what maybe Kundnani sees as one of the best ways to fight Eurowhiteness: immigration coverage.
The corrective is a coverage which amends the flip away from Commonwealth-based immigration — a type of reparations issued on the trail to changing into a much less Eurocentric nation:
It will be doable to go additional within the rebalancing of British immigration coverage that has taken place since Brexit — particularly, by making it simpler for residents of Britain’s former colonies to return to the UK. … such a coverage — what is perhaps known as “post-imperial choice” — might even be regarded as a type of reparations.
As soon as once more, the good substitute trope is an evil conspiracy concept when noticed by a critic and an apparent political good when advocated for by a supporter.
Sure. And?
Kundnani’s thesis may be pulled aside on quite a few technical ranges. The appropriateness of the notion of regionalism as utilized to the EU and its analogy to nationalism may be questioned, and in flip there may be typically a conflation of ideas, with “Europe”, “the European Union” and “EU Member states” used interchangeably as fits his argument. A reasonably weak critique of neoliberalism additionally flows beneath the principle critique of Eurowhiteness and the linkage between the EU and colonialism feels pressured. By the point the EEC got here alongside within the Nineteen Fifties, European colonialism was in its loss of life throes, removed from the peak of its energy. Nonetheless, missing an in depth understanding of the historical past and functioning of the EU and of the political conceptions of its management class, my evaluate of the narrative of Eurowhiteness turns elsewhere.
A lot of the ebook is perplexing for those who don’t have a pathological sense of White guilt or an inferiority complicated concerning the success of European civilization. That is unquestionably a ebook produced from a long time spent ensconced in an instructional world brimming with anti-White narratives, plundering the rancid depths of post-colonial concept for a vector to assault an establishment that even most die-hard progressives help — till they learn Kundnani’s ebook maybe. The extent of White guilt {that a} reader should have to agree together with his conclusions is altogether scary when contemplating that the ebook has obtained a usually optimistic response within the British left-wing press.
To me, the arguments introduced within the ebook elicited a type of “Sure. And?” response, a way of confusion or bemusement as to why a historic reality or a political actuality has been introduced as a unfavorable. Kundnani considers it damning proof of Eurowhiteness that the EU attracts upon figures akin to Charlemagne and continues to award the Charlemagne Prize in his title. Why is that this damning? As a result of he’s European? At its coronary heart, Kundnani’s critique is that the European Union solely brings collectively European nations and peoples, European concepts and values, and strives for European pursuits and targets. Sure. And? Is that this a foul factor? Are Europeans not allowed to do that? The EU was actually by no means constituted in any approach apart from as a continental union, no totally different than comparable unions that now exist within the different areas of the world. The truth that a number of the authentic member states nonetheless possessed leftover colonial territories is inappropriate.
It’s exhausting to shake the sensation that Kundnani feels there’s something inherently harmful with the European Union setting its geographic limits as Europe and bringing Europeans collectively. The flat refusal issued to Morocco’s request to affix the EEC in 1987 is reworked by Kundnani from an apparent rejection issued to a rustic making an attempt to easily money in on proximity to Europe into proof of a malign id embedded inside the EU. Does Kundnani assume it was incorrect to reject Morrocco’s utility? As a rustic with an extended historic hyperlink to the African continent, would Spain being rejected from becoming a member of the African Union even be couched in such unfavorable framing?
A Union, for those who can preserve it
Eurowhiteness raises questions concerning the long-term sturdiness of the EU venture. If the demographic traits away from a White majority in European nations proceed, will we begin to see extra Euroscepticism from the left, extra anti-White reactions in opposition to the EU like that which has captivated Kundnani? While it could be comforting to consider that Eurowhiteness is an remoted product of the distinctly British detachment from the EU that has no forex elsewhere, Kundnani attracts upon a world vary of anti-EU views, each historic and current-day. It’s not exhausting to see conclusions akin to his, introduced in an accessible type, from creating in reputation.
Non-whites residing within the West have stepped up their rhetoric in recent times, rallying in opposition to the presence of White faces and White concepts inside their residing areas. Statues have been eliminated, the Western canon expunged, and names of locations and establishments modified for the sake of range and anti-racism. Their actions have proven that they consider that each one Eurocentric concepts have to be challenged, and above all that various faces have to be predominant in public life. To a level it’s stunning that critiques of the EU alongside these strains haven’t emerged earlier than to a big diploma. Maybe that’s merely as a result of political left adopting a reflexive pro-EU stance within the face of the right-wing anti-EU stance —a reflexive response that Kundnani is now searching for to appropriate.
In the end, the impulse behind Eurowhiteness is a way of exclusion by Europe and a sense of discomfort in Western civilisation, one actually shared by others of non-European background. Kundnani admits as a lot himself when he states that: “European id is externally unique — that’s, it excludes those that aren’t European or who can’t consider themselves as being European.” To these of us snug with European id, Charles Martel or Charlemagne are inspirational warriors of our historical past, males who formed and fought for the Europe we now have and cherish at this time and with out whom we might not even exist.
All that individuals like Kundnani appear to see are exclusionary figures who upheld Christendom or who waged wars to defend Europe from dark-skinned Muslims — detestable characters they can not really feel an affinity with and whom they consider solely a racist would have fun. They survey the historical past of Europe and all of the cultural touchpoints behind the EU and discover that it simply doesn’t signify them. From a racialist perspective, they can not actually be faulted for this. It’s a pure impulse to hunt out the acquainted and to want to dwell in an setting that accords together with your being and your personal racial id. The issue was at all times in letting them into the West within the first place.
In all, Kundnani’s polemic in opposition to the EU reads as a concern of White unity writ massive. Whiteness (or Eurowhiteness) is the menace to beat. That a lot is obvious when he advocates for non-White immigration as the answer to Britain extracting itself from Eurocentrism and frets concerning the risk of the far-right moderating its Euroscepticism and accepting the EU.
The middle proper, it seems, doesn’t have an issue with the far proper. It simply has an issue with those that defy E.U. establishments and positions. …The blurring of boundaries between the middle proper and the far proper will not be at all times as straightforward to identify as it’s in the USA. …
oday’s far proper speaks not solely on behalf of the nation but additionally on behalf of Europe. It has a civilizational imaginative and prescient of a white, Christian Europe that’s menaced by outsiders, particularly Muslims. …
However because the union unites round defending a threatened European civilization and rejecting nonwhite immigration, we have to assume once more about whether or not it actually is a pressure for good.
Any type of White id, and any affiliation of Whites collectively as Whites, even when solely implicit, should essentially be a harmful factor. As Eurowhiteness proves, even Western establishments that we might have as soon as thought of secure by advantage of being perceived as progressive at the moment are suspect.
Notes
By his personal admission this didn’t nonetheless trigger him to vote Go away within the Brexit referendum of 2016, presumably as a result of it nonetheless felt racist to take action
At this level, Kundnani posits the Marxist concept of nationalism (Hobsbawm, and so forth.), which claims that nationwide identities solely emerged in the course of the Enlightenment period, but it surely doesn’t influence the argument a lot.
Kundnani, H 2023, Eurowhiteness: Tradition, Empire and Race within the European Undertaking, Hurst & Firm, London, 42.
Ibid., p.53—55
For all of the complaints about European universality or that “Europe will not be the world”, Kundnani conveniently fails to say the empires and colonial histories of the non-European world, which have been each bit as exploitative and arguably extra barbaric.
Kundnani, Op. Cit., p.126
Ibid., p.146
Ibid., p.3
Ibid., p.1
Ibid., p.178
Ibid., p.20
Kundnani, H 2023, ‘Europe could also be headed for one thing unthinkable’, New York Occasions, December 13, retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/opinion/european-union-far-right.html
