There is a persistent and vocal minority, a group of weeping Jeremiahs, who prophecy the end of the West — or, more precisely, Western Civilization, or sometimes white people — unless it returns to the ways of its ancestors. However, unlike all other causes such as saving the baby seals, there is no explicit enemy. Rather, it seems to be an internal issue, so it has become quite difficult for this movement to gather much sympathy, both from within or without. For example, there are no Chinese organizations rallying behind the cause, nor United Nations committees concerned with saving the West.
As a strictly internal issue, then, it must be the case that there is a real West and an ersatz West. It is this latter fake West that, amoeba-like, is engulfing the real West in an act of autophagous self-anihilation. Let’s define the ersatz West first, since it is easier to understand the anti-West.
The anti-West, as a negative force, must therefore be devoid of qualities. Hence, it has no being, but only a becoming. Thus, there is no need for ancestors nor their ways. The man or woman of the anti-West is a Hegelian. He believes he has reached the end of history, he has overcome all superstitious beliefs, he bases his life on the scientific rational worldview, and as the epitome of human nature, he understands the human. As the man without qualities or essences, all previous identitarian categories are considered arbitrary and accidental: nation, ethnicity, race, religion, sexual preference, even gender itself. His only task is a mopping up action, dragging along the retrograde elements in society whether through education, indocrination, persuasion, shaming, or coercion if necessary.
So, what is the West? An objective definition is insufficient because the anti-West would also accept it: namely, the West consists of those people who happen to inhabit that part of the globe historically identified as the West. Hence, we need a subjective definition that would include ancestors and their ways. When did people begin to self identify as Westerners, or Europeans, to be more precise. First, as a cultural phenomenon, the roots of th West began in Greece and the the Hellenic Empire. This was then consolidated in the Roman Empire whose citizens, whatever their ethnicity, regarded themselves as Romans. However, geographically it included much that was not in Europe and ommitted Northern Europe.
After the fall of Rome and the loss of its Asian and African provinces to Islam, it took the Holy Roman Empire and Christendom to fully define Europe more or less as it is today. The Nordic, Celtic, and Germanic elements joined with the remnants of the Roman to create the spiritual and cultural entity that we can call Europe. Unfortunately, there is significant element of neo-pagans who paradoxically try both to save Europe and to deny the role of Christendom in its historical creation. They rely on an ahistorical understanding of race that, against all evidence, they expect to act as a unifying factor. They regard their ancestors as limited to the pre-European era, skipping over 1500 years of common history. This common period is considered a dark age built on a foundation of an alleged pagan holocaust. Thus the battle is between a well-entrenched anti-West that denies the existence of the West itself, and an pre-West that lacks sufficient self-understanding to save itself, being based on an anti-intellectual naturalism.
Part 2 will analyze the pre-West in detail.