Whiteness, multiculturalism and nationalist appropriation of Celtic culture: The case of the League of the South and the Lega Nord

Cultural Geographies

Volumn 12, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 151-173

  Hague, Euan ^a   Giordano, Benito ^b   Sebesta, Edward H ^c  

^a DEPAUL UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER   (United Kingdom)

^c NONE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL IDENTITY; ETHNICITY; MULTICULTURALISM; NATIONALISM;

EASTERN HEMISPHERE; EURASIA; EUROPE; ITALY; NORTH AMERICA; SOUTHERN EUROPE; UNITED STATES; WESTERN HEMISPHERE; WORLD;

EID: 16344395999     PISSN: 14744740     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1191/1474474005eu316oa     Document Type: Article

References (112)

1. Duncan Campbell, 'Neo-confederates want out of US', Guardian (18 Sept. 2000);
2. Rory Carroll, 'Northern League's new threat to Italian unity', Guardian (18 Sept. 2000).
3. SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center), Rebels with a cause, Intelligence Report no. 99 (2000), p. 6. The SPLC are an institution dedicated to monitoring racist organizations in the United States. League of the South president Dr James Michael Hill who also publishes as J. Michael Hill and, most commonly, as Michael Hill, subsequently refuted the SPLC report. Hill describes the SPLC as 'leftist totalitarians' who fail to provide 'a particle of hard evidence to support its accusations and aspersions':
4. see 'Message to the Southern Poverty Law Center And Its Leftist Allies' (2000). Downloaded from http://www.dixienet.org/Is-press-releases/ LS-special-reports/splc.htm (29 July 2001).
5. Subsequently, in May 2001, this reformed coalition was victorious, gaining majorities in both lower and upper houses of the Italian parliament, ensuring that the Lega Nord once again held a stake in government.
6. Following a threat of legal action by a sporting organization that was already using the name, the Southern League became the 'League of the South' in 1997. LS President, Dr Michael Hill explained to members of the organization. 'Your dues are better spent on a cause with a less-than-perfect name, rather than on litigation that would rob us of our cause while trying to defend an indefensible name' - 'It's in the air', Southern patriot 4 (1997), p. 34.
7. Thomas Fleming, 'From our board . . .', Southern patriot 3 (1996), p. 43.
8. The League of the South identify an 'Anglo-Celtic' person as being 'a Celt who speaks English, yet retains Celtic cultural characteristics': Barry Reid McCain, 'The Anglo-Celts', Southern patriot 3 (1996), pp. 35-7. This will be discussed below.
9. Clare Beckett and Marie Macy, 'Race, gender and sexuality: the oppression of multiculturalism', Women's studies international forum 24 (2001), pp. 309-19.
10. Ibid., p. 316.
11. Nina Glick Schiller 'Editor's foreword: the dialectics of race and culture', Identities 1 (1995), pp. iii-iv.
12. Tariq Modood, 'Introduction: the politics of multiculturalism in the new Europe', in Tariq Modood and Pnina Werbner, eds, The politics of multiculturalism in the New Europe: racism, identity and community (London, Zed Books, 1997), pp. 1-25.
13. Chaim Gans, The limits of nationalism (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003) typifies such an evaluation, asserting the a priori relationship between culture and territorial integrity.
14. David C. Harvey, Rhys Jones, Neil McInroy and Christine Milligan, 'Timing and spacing Celtic geographies;' in Celtic geographies: old culture, new times, ed. David C. Harvey, Rhys Jones, Neil McInroy and Christine Milligan (London, Routledge, 2002), p. 1.
15. See two recent collections: Amy Hale and Philip Payton, eds, New directions in Celtic studies (University of Exeter Press, Exeter, 2000) and Harvey et al., Celtic geographies.
16. Malcolm Chapman, The Celts: the construction of a myth (London, Macmillan, 1992)
17. and Simon James, The Atlantic Celts: ancient people or modern invention? (London, British Museum Press, 1999)
18. Ibid., p. 26.
19. Katie Trumpener, Bardic nationalism: the romantic novel and the British empire (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 4.
20. John G. Robb, 'A geography of Celtic appropriations', in Harvey et al., Celtic geographies, pp. 229-42.
21. For recent invocations of pan-European Celts, see Sabatino Moscati, Otto Hermann Frey, Venceslas Kruta, Barry Raftery and Miklos Szabo, eds, The Celts (New York, Rizzoli, 1991).
22. John Haywood's recent Atlas of the Celtic world (New York, Thames & Hudson, 2001) identifies Celts as being similarly widespread throughout Europe and covers a timeline of Celtic history from 1200 bc to the 1999 opening of the Scottish parliament. Such publications identifying a Celtic European empire co-exist with analyses, such as those by Simon James and Malcolm Chapman, which question the validity of such claims.
23. Richard Dyer, for example, notes that Romantic writers venerated Scotland as a location where whiteness was at its purest due to the mountainous terrain, climate and remoteness from contaminating non-white bodies. See White (London, Routledge, 1997).
24. Michael Dietler, review of The Celtic world, ed. Miranda J. Green, American antiquity 61 (1996), pp. 611-12.
25. Moscati et al., The Celts.
26. See Umberto Melotti, 'International migration in Europe: social projects and political cultures', in Modood, The politics of multiculturalism in the New Europe, pp. 73-92. Melotti notes that a multi-ethnic population is a relatively recent phenomenon in Italy, dating from the mid-1970s. The first Italian government document on multiculturalism was published in 1991, and by the middle of the decade Italy became 'the EU country with the highest proportion of non-EU immigrants to total immigrants' (p. 87).
27. See recent assessments of Irish popularity in the USA by Reginald Byron, Irish America (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1999);
28. Jim Arndorfer, 'McSploitation', Baffler 12 (1999), pp. 23-30;
29. Natasha Casey, 'The importance of being Irish-American', Chicago Tribune, (2 Mar. 2003).
30. For discussion of US reactions to and understandings of Braveheart see Euan Hague, 'Scotland on film: attitudes and opinions about Braveheart', Etudes écossaises 6 (1999-2000), pp. 75-89.
31. For review of the status of Scottish ethnic identity in the US in 1980, see Mary C. Waters, Ethnic options: choosing identities in America (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990), ch. 2.
32. Diane Roberts, 'Your clan or ours?', Oxford American (1999), p. 24.
33. Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a different color: European immigrants and the alchemy of race (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1998);
34. Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish became white (New York, Routledge, 1995).
35. Arndorfer, 'McSploitation', p. 26; Euan Hague, 'The Scottish diaspora: Tartan Day and the appropriation of Scottish identities in the United States', in Harvey et al., Celtic geographies, p. 154.
36. Stephen Castles, 'Democracy and multiculturalism in Western Europe', Journal of area studies 8 (1996), pp. 51-76.
37. Ibid., p. 55.
38. Michael Hill, 'Kith and kin', Southern patriot 3 (1996), pp. 33-4. Available at http://www.dixienet.org/spatriot/vol3no5/ prez13.html (accessed 24 Oct. 2003).
39. Michael Hill, 'Extreme traditionalism', Southern patriot 3 (1996). Available at http://www.dixienet.org/spatriot/vol3no2/prez10.html (accessed 16 Oct. 2003).
40. League of the South, 'The League of the South position: our statement of purpose', League of the South Positon Paper. Available at http://www.dixienet.org/positions/Ispositn.htm (accessed 23 Oct. 2003).
41. Martin Bulmer and John Solomos, 'Introduction: re-thinking ethnic and racial studies' Ethnic and racial studies 21 (1998), p. 828.
42. Peter Jackson, 'Constructions of "whiteness" in the geographical imagination', Area 30 (1998), p. 104.
43. Bulmer and Solomos, 'Introduction', p. 825.
44. Schiller, 'Editor's foreword', p. iii
45. Hague, 'The Scottish diaspora'.
46. Mitch Berbrier 'White supremacists and the (pan-)ethnic imperative: on "European-Americans" and "white student unions"', Sociological inquiry 68 (1998), p. 498-99.
47. Ibid., p. 513.
48. Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and nationalism since 1780: programme, myth, reality (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990);
49. Julia Kristeva, Nations without nationalism (New York, Columbia University Press, 1993).
50. The League of the South have been reviewed by, amongst others, Diane Roberts, 'A league of their own', Southern exposure 25 (1997), pp. 18-23;
51. Edward H. Sebesta, 'The confederate memorial tartan - officially approved by the Scottish Tartan Authority', Scottish affairs 31 (2000), pp. 55-84;
52. Tara McPherson, 'I'll take my stand in Dixienet: white guys, the South and cyberspace', in Race in cyberspace, ed. Beth E. Kolko, Lisa Nakamura and Gilbert B. Rodman, (New York, Routledge, 2000), pp. 117-31.
53. Edward H. Sebesta and Euan Hague, 'The U.S. Civil War as a theological struggle: Confederate Christian nationalism and the League of the South', Canadian review of American studies 32 (2002), pp. 253-83.
54. The states that seceded in the 1860s were: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. The four additional states are Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland. Southern patriot, 'President's note', 4 (1997), p. 26.
55. Alan Colme, Michael Hill, and Edward H. Sebesta, 'The Alan Colme show', NewsTalk 1050 WEVD New York. Broadcast 19 August 1999. Transcript available at http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/WEVD.htm (accessed 25 April 2000). Claiming States' rights is a common geopolitical strategy by US conservative activists.
56. Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the attic: dispatches from the unfinished Civil War (New York, Vintage, 1999), p. 68.
57. In their review of Terry G. Jordan's Trails to Texas: Southern roots of western cattle ranching (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1981), published in Southwestern historical quarterly, 87 (1983), pp. 218-19, proponents of the Celtic thesis Grady McWhiney and Forrest McDonald describe Jordan's analysis as 'invaluable' and 'superb' for the way it 'devastates' Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier thesis and the 'Hispanic-American' explanation of cattle ranching in the South. Jordan's description of 'Anglo-American cattle herding' is welcomed with the proviso that the activities that Jordan describes are neither English nor American, rather 'Celtic traditions, practiced by the Irish, Scottish, and Welsh herdsmen of the British Isles for many centuries before they appeared in colonial America'. McWhiney also acknowledges Jordan in Cracker culture: Celtic ways in the old South (Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 1988).
58. James Michael Hill, Celtic warfare 1595-1763 (Edinburgh, Donald, 1986).
59. For Grady McWhiney's development of the Celtic thesis see e.g. 'The revolution in nineteenth century Alabama agriculture', Alabama review 31 (1978), pp. 3-32;
60. Cracker culture; Grady McWhiney and Perry Jamieson, Attack and die: Civil War military tactics and the Southern heritage (Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 1982);
61. Grady McWhiney and Forrest McDonald, 'Celtic origins of Southern herding practices', Journal of Southern history 51 (1985), pp. 165-82.
62. These and others are reviewed in detail in Euan Hague, 'Texts as flags: the League of the South and the development of a nationalist intelligentsia in the United States 1975-2001' Hagar: International social science review 3 (2002), 299-339.
63. McWhiney and Jamieson, Attack and die, p. 178.
64. Jerry Adler and Holly Morris, 'Celts vs. Anglo-Saxons', Newsweek (10 Aug. 1981), p. 70.
65. Rowland Berthoff, rejoinder to Forrest McDonald and Grady McWhiney, 'A response' to "Celtic mist over the South"', Journal of Southern History 52 (1986), p. 549.
66. Rowland Berthoff, 'Celtic mist over the South', Journal of Southern history 52 (1986), p. 525.
67. Also see e.g. Ned Landsman, 'Communications' regarding "The ethnic origins of the American people, 1790", William and Mary quarterly (third series) 41 (1984), pp. 680-81;
68. Donald Harman Akenson, Being bad: historians, evidence, and the Irish in North America (Port Credit, Ontario, P. D. Meany, 1985);
69. Elliott J. Gorn, review of McWhiney, Cracker culture, Journal of American history 75 (1989), pp. 1290-1291. See Hague, 'Texts as flags' for a fuller analysis.
70. Anthony J. Sheehan, review of Hill Celtic warfare 1595-1763, Irish historical studies 27 (1990), p. 93.
71. Clyde N. Wilson, 'Crackers and roundheads', Chronicles: a magazine of American culture 12 (1988), pp. 22-5;
72. Grady McWhiney, 'The Celtic heritage of the Old South', Chronicles: a magazine of American culture 13 (1989), pp. 12-15.
73. Grady McWhiney, 'Continuity in Celtic warfare', Continuity 2 (1981), pp. 1-18.
74. Hill, 'Kith and kin', p. 34.
75. Barry Reid McCain 'The Anglo-Celts', Southern patriot 3 (1996), p. 35.
76. Echoing McCain, other LS members regularly contribute assessments of the Celtic people and culture of the American South - see e.g. Michael W. Masters, 'We are a people', Southern patriot 2 (1995), pp. 27-8;
77. Roger Busbice, 'The Confederate nation and our Celtic cousins', Southern events 4 (1999), pp. 1, 19-20.
78. Diane Roberts and Michael Hill, 'Interview: The Southern League: hoping the South will rise again', Weekend edition, 5 May 1996, National Public Radio (USA). Transcript available from NPR, Burrelle's Transcripts, PO Box 7, Livingston, NJ07039-0077, USA.
79. See McCain, 'The Anglo-Celts'.
80. See e.g. 'The League of the South grand strategy'. Available at http://www.dixienet.org/ls-homepg/ls-grand-strategy.html (accessed 18 Jan. 2005).
81. Clyde Wilson, 'After independence', Southern patriot 4 (1996), p. 27. Available at http://216.157.8.33/spatriot/vol3no4/ after_independence.html (accessed 26 June 2003). The League of the South has adopted its own grammatical rules; thus 'wont' is purposely spelled without an apostrophe.
82. See e.g. Barry Yeoman, 'The Hispanic diaspora' Mother Jones (July/ Aug 2000), pp. 35-41, 76-7.
83. On many occasions, League of the South rhetoric is eerily close to that of the ruling Boers in Apartheid South Africa, with their assertions of the need to maintain European institutional dominance and cultural authority in their 'homeland'.
84. Michael Hill, 'The issue of race in the Southern Independence debate'. Available at http://www.dixienet.org/positions/race.htm (accessed 26 June 2003).
85. Bulmer and Solomos, 'Introduction', pp. 827-8.
86. Forrest McDonald and Grady McWhiney argue, for example, that the southern USA 'is and always has been populated mainly by persons of Celtic extraction ... the sociological/geographical accounts of Celtic peoples by the Greeks Strabo and Diodorus [read] for all the world like a caricature of our rural neighbours in modern Alabama. In other words, except for variations in technology and dress, descriptions of Celtic social norms spanning two thousand years and more are entirely interchangeable.' See 'In search of Southern roots', Reviews in American history 5 (1977), p. 456.
87. For geographical assessment of the Lega Nord, see e.g. John Agnew, 'The rhetoric of regionalism: the Northern League in Italian politics 1983-94', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 20 (1995), pp. 156-72;
88. Benito Giordano, 'A place called "Padania"? The Lega Nord and the political representation of northern Italy', European urban and regional studies 6 (1999), pp. 215-30;
89. 'Italian regionalism or "Padanian" nationalism: the political project of the Lega Nord in Italian politics', Political geography 19 (2000), pp. 445-71.
90. John Agnew and Carlo Brusa, 'New rules for national identity? The Northern League and political identity in contemporary Northern Italy', National identities 1 (1999), p. 124.
91. Cento A. Bull, 'Ethnicity, racism and the Northern League'. in Italian regionalism, history, identity and politics, ed. C. Levy (Oxford, Berg, 1996), pp. 174-75.
92. Ibid., p. 177
93. Author's fieldnotes extract from interview with a LN councillor in the commune of Varese, 27 Mar 1996.
94. Gilberto Oneto and Gianfranco Pagliarini, 50 buone ragioni per l'Indipendenza (1998). Formerly available at http://www.leganord.org/ frames/informazione.htm (accessed 31 Aug 2001).
95. Ibid., emphasis added.
96. See, e.g. Gilberto Oneto, L'invenzione della Padania: la rinascita della comunità più antica d'Europa (Bergamo, Foedus 1997). http://web.tiscali.it/brenna/tdm/letture1.htm (accessed 30 July 2004).
97. Oneto and Pagliarini, 50 buone ragioni per l'Indipendenza.
98. Similar arguments were made by nationalists in the Balkans in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Croats cast Serbs as irrational, backward and barbarous and, by implication, non-European. Similar comments were made by Serbian nationalists about Muslims in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosovo. Thanks to Alex Papadopoulos for noting these parallels.
99. La repubblica, 'Giustizia, la Lega in piazza Bossi: "No a Forcolandia" (9 Dec 2001);
100. David Willey, 'Northern League comes out fighting', available at http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1331000/ 1331704.stm (accessed 15 May 2001).
101. Umberto Bossi and Daniele Vimercati, Vento dal Nord: la mia lega la mia vita (Milan, Sperling & Kupfer, 1992), p. 149. Extracomunitari is the word used to describe people who come to Italy from countries outside the EU. It is often used in a derogatory fashion.
102. Author's fieldnotes extract from interview with a LN councillor in the commune of Varese, 27 Mar 1996.
103. Jan Penrose, 'Reification in the name of change: the impact of nationalism on social constructions of nation, people and place in Scotland and the United Kingdom', in Constructions of race, place and nation, ed. Peter Jackson and Jan Penrose (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1993), pp. 27-49.
104. Modood, 'Introduction', p. 10
105. Anthony D. Smith, National identity (London, Penguin, 1991), pp. 164-171.
106. Chris Haylett, 'Illegitimate subjects?: abject whites, neoliberal modernisation, and middle-class multiculturalism', Environment and planning D: society and space 19 (2001), pp. 351-70.
107. Audrey Kobayashi and Linda Peake, 'Racism out of place: thoughts on whiteness and an antiracist geography in the new millennium', Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90 (2000), pp. 392-403.
108. The historical development of the association of Europe with whiteness is assessed by Alastair Bonnett in 'Who was white? The disappearance of non-European white identities and the formation of European racial whiteness', Ethnic and racial studies 21 (1998), pp. 1029-55. See also Dyer, White.
109. Kobayashi and Peake, 'Racism out of place'. See also articles in the special issue about race in Professional geographer 54 (2002);
110. and recent debate about whiteness in Area, e.g. Alastair Bonnett, 'Geography, "race", and whiteness: Invisible traditions and current challenges', Area 29 (1997), pp. 193-99;
111. Jackson, 'Constructions of "whiteness"'; Mark McGuinness, 'Geography matters? Whiteness and contemporary geography', Area 32 (1999), pp. 225-30.
112. Bobby M. Wilson, 'Critically understanding race-connected practices: a reading of W.E.B. Du Bois and Richard Wright', Professional geographer 54 (2002), p. 39 (emphasis original).