White Nationalist vs. White Supremacist

[caraher]

So some knuckle-dragger on Facebook was spewing the usual BS (BLM is violent, etc.) but one argument puzzled me a bit. He was reacting to a piece calling the Charlotte Nazis "white supremacists" and he argued that was inaccurate and unfair, they're really "white nationalists." To me this sounds like a distinction without a difference (I'm certain that's true in practical terms).

But... if you want to be academic about this, what distinction might one draw regarding which of those two terms is more appropriate? I'd like at least to figure out what he was hoping to argue. My only guess is that as a white nationalist, you might imagine that you're not asserting superiority over other races, just sticking up for your own (never mind the fact that you're not having any rights threatened, at most just your white privilege).

[zaj]

1. The two core issues are... White, and Power. So...

... I'd call them both White Power activists. Even the term "activist" seems too complimentary.

[leftstreet]

6. Yeah, the White Power Movement

I don't get the 'activist' label. Makes it sound like they're no different than people who protest animal cruelty

[Historic NY]

2. Hoods vs no hoods.

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/white-nationalist

[virtualobserver]

3. White nationalist actually means that they want a "white only" nation.

[Gravitycollapse]

4. In practice, they are identical.

[loyalsister]

5. A belief in the inherent superiority of white people is the heart of it

IF there is any distinction to be made in their actions, it doesn't alter the basic philosophy that defines them.

[mathematic]

7. White nationalists prefer genocide to enslaving

If you read how they describe themselves, white nationalists say they are not saying anything about one race being superior to another race. Only that this should be a white-only nation.

For some reason they think this doesn't make them as extreme as white supremacists and thus more palatable to a mainstream audience.

[gratuitous]

8. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to, to-may-to, to-mah-to

Let's just call them Nazis.

It's baffling to me how many of these Nazis are all careful about not being called racists. For some reason, it's the one label they know isn't a good one, even as they rush to embrace "bully" and "deplorable" and all the rest. But heaven forfend anyone think they're racist!

[Iggo]

9. Is it a clip? Is it a magazine?

[haele]

10. It's semantics, but the end result is that they want the same thing.

"White Nationalists" push the idea that the USA is best represented and run by the people who "founded" the country and (supposedly) made the social and technological advances, the Protestant North/Western European White Founding Fathers and the Industrialists. Every other social group in this country are basically immigrants, making them hangers on to the "real Americans", who did all the hard work turning this country into what it is today.
If you bring up native Americans to the White Nationalist, s/he'd claim that it took the Europeans to civilize the U.S., and the native Americans were just too culturally backwards to be part of the ruling group. These are basically the John Bircher types.

White Supremacists believe that there actual races based on solely on the color of skin and a probable .0002 or so percentage of one's DNA from another's based on a cultural or tribal background some 3000 - 4000 years ago; the lighter one's skin and hair color is, there should be a significantly more superior condition of body and mind from other, more dark-skinned human beings, or so they think.
To the supremacists, "races" should not mix, because it creates deficiencies in both "racial" groups. And the superior people should be in charge of everything, because they are superior.

Ultimately, they both believe that only White people should count as full fledged citizens, and wealthy White people should be in charge.
Everyone else is inferior, and should be subject to either segregation or removal altogether from American society.

Of course, how either group determines what is White is subjective - those young 2nd/3rd generation Southern and Eastern European American Dudes who are putting on the Khakis and Polo shirts will find themselves next to be kicked out of American Society once someone higher up the Light Skin scale wants their stuff - but you can't tell them that so long as there's people darker than them to pick on.

History informs us that societies that segregate will keep on segregating until only one small group has all the power, and everyone else is subservient to them - and then it all falls apart.

Haele

[Tom Rinaldo]

11. Remember "Seperate but Equal" and how "equal" actually looked in practice? Yeah, like that.

That's white nationalism in a nutshell. Maybe at the most "moderate" end of their spectrum a few folks might settle for "English Only" laws, and a heavily Euro-centric education curriculum, but mostly they want a "white homeland" and the right to discriminate based on race (voluntary association) if not flat out demanding outright exile for non-whites.

[Iggo]

12. They want to get you bogged down in the minutiae.

White Nationalists
White Supremacists
Skinheads
Nazis
Klan

Same shit. Different neighborhood.

[caraher]

13. Thanks for all the thoughts on this

yeah, in the end the distinctions don't count for much. I had enough to go on to call this guy out for what he is (despite his protestations that he was just "clarifying" and providing a reasoned analysis). But it's good to get a sense of what levels of purported nuance I'm disregarding!

[mythology]

14. I think much of the change is that they think white nationalist sounds better than supremacist

It puts a "nicer" face on their bigotry and tries to channel the anger of people who feel under threat from minorities or resentful of programs like affirmative action (regardless of how unjustified) and use that to bring them in. The theory being that "it's not that we hate blacks, Hispanics, etc, we just want to take pride in our heritage, the way the country used to be where a guy could earn a living and his wife stayed at home and took care of the kids, we're just trying to do what other races are and stick up for ourselves".

And it's all bullshit semantics as you noted.