As I was writing my short ethnonarcissist manifesto I came to the realization that perhaps it will have to be published in parts and so this is going to be the first part.
What matters is to show why nationalism is a good thing. My argument comes from Yoram Hazony’s The Virtue of Nationalism (2018): people act to strengthen their nation “not out of altruism, but because strengthening the tribe or nation is experienced as strengthening themselves.” Self-interest is therefore the key to understanding nationalism.
Contrast with Westoids, a Jew like Hazony sees nationalism for what it actually is, the self, extended to the group.
Anti-nationalism therefore could be understood as negation of the self, as a path towards self-destruction and one which causes significant mental anguish and disturbances to those who take it. I make a broader case for leftism being a mental disorder in the following article:
Is Leftism A Mental Disorder?
This is a reworked version of my original YouTube video in which I make the argument that leftism among Whites is significantly associated with poor mental health and other negative costs for its adherents. I will make a further claim that such an association has a causal mechanism that is more influenced by environment than genetics.
Now the goal of this article is to establish a clear line between empirical evidence and the thesis that Nationalism is good for your soul. In the behind the pay-wall section I will lay down some arguments for the thesis supportive of ethnonarcissism which is a separate phenomenon from nationalism as it is borderless.
While we know that leftist and anti-racists are subhuman freaks who are mentally ill, we don’t affirm enough of our own moral and mental superiority. We spend too much time mocking the out-group that we forgot why the in-group is fundamentally good. Why we as Nationalists (of any nation really) are fundamentally better people.
The answer is the same as for why capitalism beats socialism: self-interest. We choose our own side. We choose our extended family over the foreigner, and thus we live our lives as they were meant to be lived. As a successful social collective.
While evolutionary and social benefits of nationalism are properly grounded but in case you need an extra reminder it is good because:
It enhances your group’s evolutionary fitness.
It earns you reciprocity. Your own people look out for you in return.
It brings cultural attachments and legacy that you carry on as it was carried on before you.
Some other deeper meaning.
At the end of the day you are still perceived as a group member by other groups and individuals irrespective what you think about it yourself so you better get in with the program goy.
Most importantly, if nationalism is a positive behavior, you would expect evolution to reward it, and that is exactly what we see:
The early evidence comes from the largest study of the question. Morrison, Tay and Diener (2011) have analyzed Gallup World Poll data from 132,516 people in 128 countries and found that satisfaction with one’s country is a strong predictor of one’s own life satisfaction (β = 0.40, r = .47), stronger than satisfaction with health, job or standard of living. The relationship is universal irrespective of the income level.
The authors explain it through social identity theory: the more central a group is to who you are, the more its success becomes your own, this vindicating Yoram Hazony’s central thesis.
Some may dismiss this finding as being a proxy for social belonging. A good faith rebuttal is to cite Church attendance data and say that those who attend Church have better emotional and psychological wellbeing than those who don’t. But in another study by Bonetto et al. (2022), they have adjusted for social belonging directly, ideology, and a bunch of other factors and yet national identity still predicted wellbeing.
Most notably this did not extend to physical health, which suggests the benefit is psychological, not a side effect of being healthier or better connected. That is to say:
Anti-nationalism or non-nationalism are not necessarily a consequence of mutational load or of dysgenics.
It is something in your head. The feeling of being part of one’s nation carries something that belonging to friends, family and local groups does not.
Nationalism is an ideology one can adopt. You can still be a lonely nationalist but you will be better off than a lonely non-nationalist.
Funny enough the same effect does not work for being “nationalistic” of maladaptive groups the LGBTQ or Antifa.
A more recent massive 100 thousand study from 2025 establishes an even clearer picture. It is nationalism specifically, not belonging. Both national pride and national citizenship are ways of being tied to the same nation, and only pride carried the effect.
This brings us to the paywalled section of this article, that is, the question of ethnonarcissism:
