Australia The
White Australia policy was semi-official government policy in Australia until the mid twentieth century. It restricted non-white immigration to Australia and gave preference to British migrants over all others. The
Barton government, which won the
first elections following the
Federation of Australia in 1901, was formed by the
Protectionist Party with the support of the
Australian Labor Party (ALP). The support of the Labor Party was contingent upon restricting non-white immigration, reflecting the attitudes of the
Australian Workers' Union and other labor organizations at the time, upon whose support the Labor Party was founded. The first
Parliament of Australia quickly moved to restrict immigration to maintain Australia's "British character", passing the
Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901 and the
Immigration Restriction Act 1901 before parliament rose for its first Christmas recess. The Immigration Restriction Act limited
immigration to Australia and required a person seeking entry to Australia to write out a passage of 50 words dictated to them in any
European language, not necessarily
English, at the discretion of an immigration officer. Barton argued in favour of the bill: "The doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman." The passage chosen for the test could often be very difficult, so that even if the test was given in English, a person was likely to fail. The test enabled immigration officials to exclude individuals on the basis of race without explicitly saying so. Although the test could theoretically be given to any person arriving in Australia, in practice it was given selectively on the basis of race. This test was later abolished in 1958. Australian Prime Minister
Stanley Bruce supported the White Australia policy, and made it an issue in his campaign for the
1925 Australian federal election. It is necessary that we should determine what are the ideals towards which every Australian would desire to strive. I think those ideals might well be stated as being to secure our national safety, and to ensure the maintenance of our White Australia Policy to continue as an integral portion of the British Empire. At the beginning of
World War II, Prime Minister
John Curtin (ALP) expressed support for White Australia policy: "This country shall remain forever the home of the descendants of those people who came here in peace in order to establish in the South Seas an outpost of the British race." Another (ALP)
Leader of the Labor Party from 1960 to 1967
Arthur Calwell supported the White European Australia policy. This is reflected by Calwell's comments in his 1972 memoirs,
Be Just and Fear Not, in which he made it clear that he maintained his view that non-European people should not be allowed to settle in Australia. He wrote: I am proud of my white skin, just as a Chinese is proud of his yellow skin, a Japanese of his brown skin, and the Indians of their various hues from black to coffee-coloured. Anybody who is not proud of his race is not a man at all. And any man who tries to stigmatize the Australian community as racist because they want to preserve this country for the white race is doing our nation great harm... I reject, in conscience, the idea that Australia should or ever can become a multi-racial society and survive. He was the last leader of either the Labour or Liberal party to support it.
Canada The
Parliament of Canada passed the
Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 to bar all Chinese from coming to Canada with the exception of diplomats, students, and those granted special permission by the Minister of Immigration.
Chinese immigration to Canada had already been heavily regulated by the
Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 which required Chinese immigrants to pay a $50 fee to enter the country (the fee was increased to one hundred dollars in 1900 and to five hundred dollars in 1903). Groups such as the
Asiatic Exclusion League, which had formed in
Vancouver,
British Columbia, on 12 August 1907 under the auspices of the Trades and Labour Council, pressured Parliament to halt Asian immigration. The Exclusion League's stated aim was "to keep Oriental immigrants out of British Columbia." The
Canadian government also attempted to restrict immigration from
British India by passing an
order-in-council on 8 January 1908. It prohibited immigration of persons who "in the opinion of the Minister of the Interior" did not "come from the country of their birth or citizenship by a
continuous journey and or through tickets purchased before leaving their country of their birth or nationality." In practice, this applied only to ships that began their voyages in
India, because the great distance usually necessitated a stopover in either
Japan or
Hawaii. These regulations came at a time when Canada was accepting massive numbers of immigrants (over 400,000 in 1913 alone), almost all of whom came from
Europe. This piece of legislation has been called the "
continuous journey regulation".
Finland White nationalist "Awakening" conference is held annually in Finland, attracting some hundreds of white nationalists from around the globe. The event has been attended by white supremacists from around the world;
Jared Taylor of
American Renaissance,
Kevin MacDonald, representatives of the
National Corps and others. Some of the founders of the influential
Suomen Sisu anti-immigration organization were members of the pro-Aparheid "Friends of South Africa" organization. In a 2023 survey conducted by
Iltalehti, one-third of the voters of the far-right
Finns Party, the second biggest party in parliament, thought that "the European race must be prevented from mixing with darker races, otherwise the European native population will eventually become extinct". Finns Party Minister of the Interior
Mari Rantanen wrote that if Finns remain naive on immigration, Finns "will not remain blue-eyed" and shared writings referring to refugees as "parasites". Toni Jalonen, at the time deputy-chair of the Finns Party Youth, posted a picture of a black family with the text "Vote for the Finns, so that Finland's future doesn't look like this".
Germany The
Thule Society developed out of the "Germanic Order" in 1918, and those who wanted to join the
Order in 1917 had to sign a special "blood declaration of faith" concerning their lineage: "The signer hereby swears to the best of his knowledge and belief that no Jewish or coloured blood flows in either his or in his wife's veins, and that among their ancestors are no members of the coloured races."
Heinrich Himmler, one of the main perpetrators of the
Holocaust, said in a speech in 1937: "The next decades do in fact not mean some struggle of foreign politics which Germany can overcome or not... but a question of to be or not to be for the white race..." As the Nazi ideologist
Alfred Rosenberg said on 29 May 1938 on the Steckelburg in
Schlüchtern: "It is however certain that all of us share the fate of Europe, and that we shall regard this common fate as an obligation, because in the end the very existence of White people depends on the unity of the European continent." At the same time, the
Nazi Party subdivided white people into groups, viewing the
Nordics as the "
master race" (
Herrenvolk) above groups like Alpine and Mediterranean peoples. Slavic peoples, such as Russians and Poles, were considered
Untermenschen (subhumans) instead of Aryan.
Adolf Hitler's conception of the Aryan
Herrenvolk ("Aryan master race") explicitly excluded the vast majority of
Slavs, regarding the Slavs as having dangerous Jewish and Asiatic influences. The Nazis, because of this, declared Slavs to be
Untermenschen. Hitler described Slavs as "a mass of born slaves who feel the need of a master". Hitler declared that because Slavs were subhumans that the
Geneva Conventions were not applicable to them, and German soldiers in
World War II were thus permitted to ignore the Geneva Conventions in regard to Slavs. Hitler called Slavs "a rabbit family" meaning they were intrinsically idle and disorganized. Nazi Germany's propaganda minister
Joseph Goebbels had media speak of Slavs as primitive animals who were from the Siberian tundra who were like a "dark wave of filth". The Nazi notion of Slavs being inferior was part of the agenda for creating
Lebensraum ("living space") for Germans and other Germanic people in
Central and Eastern Europe that was initiated during World War II under , millions of Germans and other Germanic settlers would be moved into conquered territories of Eastern Europe, while the original Slavic inhabitants were to be exterminated and enslaved. Nazi Germany's ally the
Independent State of Croatia rejected the common conception that
Croats were primarily a Slavic people and claimed that Croats were primarily the descendants of the Germanic
Goths. However the Nazi regime continued to classify Croats as "subhuman" in spite of the alliance.
Hungary Hungarian Prime Minister
Viktor Orbán stated in 2018 that "we do not want to be diverse and do not want to be mixed: we do not want our own colour, traditions and national culture to be mixed with those of others." In 2022, he stated that "we do not want to become peoples of mixed-race," praising
The Camp of the Saints and referring specifically to the admixture of Europeans and non-European migrants, commenting that racially mixed countries "are no longer nations." Two days later in Vienna, he clarified that he was talking about cultures and not about race. Laura Barrón-López of
PBS described his ideology as white nationalist. White nationalists of the American
alt-right and the European
identitarian movements enthusiastically support Orbán's policies. Some have personally migrated there and collaborated with the political party
Jobbik.
New Zealand Following the example of anti-Chinese poll taxes enacted by California in 1852 and by Australian states in the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s,
John Hall's government passed the Chinese Immigration Act 1881. This imposed a £10 tax per Chinese person entering the
Colony of New Zealand, and permitted only one Chinese immigrant for every 10 tons of cargo.
Richard Seddon's government increased the tax to £100 per head in 1896, and tightened the other restriction to only one Chinese immigrant for every 200 tons of cargo. The Immigration Restriction Act of 1899 prohibited the entry of immigrants who were not of British or Irish parentage and who were unable to fill out an application form in "any European language". The Immigration Restriction Amendment Act 1920 aimed to further limit Asian immigration into the
Dominion of New Zealand by requiring all potential immigrants not of British or Irish parentage to apply in writing for a permit to enter the country. The Minister of Customs had the discretion to determine whether any applicant was "suitable". Prime Minister
William Massey asserted that the act was "the result of a deep seated sentiment on the part of a huge majority of the people of this country that this Dominion shall be what is often called a 'white' New Zealand." One case of a well known opponent of non-European immigration to New Zealand is that of
white supremacist Lionel Terry who, after traveling widely to South Africa, British Columbia and finally New Zealand and publishing a book highly critical of capitalism and Asian immigration, shot and killed an elderly Chinese immigrant in
Wellington. Terry was convicted of murder in 1905 and sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life incarceration in New Zealand psychiatric institutions. A Department of External Affairs memorandum in 1953 stated: "Our immigration is based firmly on the principle that we are and intend to remain a country of European development. It is inevitably discriminatory against Asians—indeed against all persons who are not wholly of European race and colour. Whereas we have done much to encourage immigration from Europe, we do everything to discourage it from Asia."
Paraguay In
Paraguay, the New Australian Movement founded
New Australia, a white supremacist
utopian socialist settlement in 1893. Its founder,
William Lane, intended the settlement to be based on a "common-hold" instead of a commonwealth, life marriage,
teetotalism,
communism and a brotherhood of Anglophone
white people and the preservation of the "colour-line". The colony was officially founded as
Colonia Nueva Australia and comprised 238 adults and children. In July 1893, the first ship left Sydney, Australia for Paraguay, where the government was keen to get white settlers, and had offered the group a large area of good land. The settlement had been described as a refuge for misfits, failures and malcontents of the left wing of Australian democracy. Notable Australian individuals who joined the colony included
Mary Gilmore,
Rose Summerfield and
Gilbert Stephen Casey. Summerfield was the mother of
León Cadogan, a noted Paraguayan ethnologist. Due to poor management and a conflict over the prohibition of alcohol, the government of Paraguay eventually dissolved New Australia as a cooperative. Some colonists founded communes elsewhere in Paraguay but others returned to Australia or moved to England. , around 2,000 descendants of the New Australia colonists still lived in Paraguay.
South Africa In
South Africa, white nationalism was championed by the
National Party starting in 1914, when it was established as a political party to represent Afrikaners after the
Second Boer War by
J. B. M. Hertzog in 1914. It articulated a policy promoting white "civilised labour" above African "
swart gevaar," and some radical nationalist movements such as the
Afrikaner Broederbond,
D. F. Malan's
Purified National Party, and
Oswald Pirow's New Order openly sympathized with Nazi Germany. In 1948, the
Reunited National Party under Malan won the
South African general election against the more moderate United Party and implemented the segregationist social system known as
apartheid. During the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, the government implemented a policy of "resettlement", to force people to move to their designated "group areas". Millions of people were forced to relocate during this period. These removals included people relocated due to
slum clearance programs, labour tenants on White-owned farms, the inhabitants of the so-called "black spots", areas of Black owned land surrounded by White farms, the families of workers living in townships close to the homelands, and "surplus people" from urban areas, including thousands of people from the Western Cape (which was declared a "Coloured Labour Preference Area") who were moved to the
Transkei and
Ciskei homelands. The best-publicised forced removals of the 1950s occurred in
Johannesburg, when 60,000 people were moved to the new township of
Soweto, an abbreviation for South Western Townships. Before South Africa became a republic, politics among white South Africans was typified by the division between the chiefly
Afrikaans-speaking pro-republic conservative and the largely English-speaking anti-republican
liberal sentiments, with the legacy of the
Boer War still constituting a political factor for sections of the white populace. Once South Africa's status as a republic was attained,
Hendrik Verwoerd called for improved relations and greater accord between the two groups. He claimed that the only difference now was between those who supported apartheid and those who stood in opposition to it. The ethnic divide would no longer be between white Afrikaans-speakers and English-speakers, but rather White and Black South Africans. Most Afrikaners supported the notion of unanimity of White people to ensure their safety. Anglophone white South Africans voters were divided. Many had opposed a republic, leading to a majority "no" vote in
Natal. Later, however, some of them recognized the perceived need for White unity, convinced by the growing trend of
decolonization elsewhere in Africa, which left them apprehensive.
Harold Macmillan's "
Wind of Change" pronouncement lead the Anglophone white South African population to perceive that the British government had abandoned them. The more conservative Anglophones gave support to Verwoerd; others were troubled by the severing of ties with Britain and remained loyal to
the Crown. They were acutely displeased at the choice between British and South African nationality. Although Verwoerd tried to bond these different blocs, the subsequent ballot illustrated only a minor swell of support, indicating that a great many Anglophones remained apathetic and that Verwoerd had not succeeded in uniting the White population in South Africa. The
Black Homeland Citizenship Act of 1970 was a
denaturalization law passed during the
apartheid era of South Africa that changed the status of the inhabitants of the Bantustans (Black homelands) so that they were no longer
citizens of South Africa. The aim was to ensure that white South Africans came to make up the majority of the
de jure population.
United States '' (1915) The
Naturalization Act of 1790 () provided the first rules to be followed by the United States government in granting national citizenship. This law limited naturalization to immigrants who were "free white persons" of "good moral character." In 1856, the
U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the
Dred Scott v. Sandford decision that
free blacks descended from slaves could not hold
United States citizenship even if they had been born in the country. Major changes to this racial requirement for US citizenship did not occur until the years following the
American Civil War. In 1868, the
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed to grant
birthright citizenship to
black people born in the US, but it specifically excluded untaxed
Indians, because they were separate nations. However, citizenship for other non-whites born in the US was not settled until 1898 with
United States v. Wong Kim Ark,
169 U.S. 649, which concluded with an important precedent in its interpretation of the
Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This racial definition of American citizenship has had consequences for perceptions of American identity. Following the defeat of the
Confederate States of America and the
abolition of slavery in the United States at the end of the
American Civil War, the
Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was founded as an
insurgent group with the goal of maintaining the Southern racial system throughout the
Reconstruction Era. Although the first incarnation of the KKK was focused on maintaining the
Antebellum South, its second incarnation in the 1915-1940s period was much more oriented towards white nationalism and American nativism. The second KKK was founded in
Atlanta, Georgia, in 1915 and, starting in 1921, it adopted a modern business system of recruiting. The organization grew rapidly nationwide at a time of prosperity. Reflecting the social tensions of urban industrialization and vastly increased immigration, its membership grew most rapidly in cities and spread out of the South to the Midwest and West. The second KKK called for strict morality and better enforcement of
prohibition. Its rhetoric promoted
anti-Catholicism and nativism. Some local groups took part in attacks on private houses and carried out other violent activities. The violent episodes were generally in the South. The second KKK was a formal
fraternal organization, with a national and state structure. At its peak in the mid-1920s, the organization claimed to include about 15% of the nation's eligible population, approximately 4 to 5 million men. Internal divisions, criminal behavior by leaders, and external opposition brought about a collapse in membership, which had dropped to about 30,000 by 1930. It faded away in the 1940s. Starting in the 1960s, white nationalism grew in the US as the conservative movement developed in mainstream society. The
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 had opened entry to the US to immigrants other than traditional Northern European and
Germanic groups, and as a result it would significantly, and unintentionally, alter the demographic mix in the US. A movement calling for
white separatism emerged in the 1980s. During the 1980s the United States also saw an increase in the number of
esoteric subcultures within white nationalism. According to
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, these movements cover a wide variety of mutually influencing groups of a radically
ethnocentric character which have emerged, especially in the
English-speaking world, since
World War II. These loose networks use a variety of mystical, occult or religious approaches in a defensive affirmation of
white identity against
modernity,
liberalism,
immigration,
multiracialism, and
multiculturalism. Some are
neo-fascist,
neo-Nazi or
Third Positionist; others are politicised around some form of white
ethnic nationalism or
identity politics, In the 2010s, the
alt-right, a broad term covering many different
far-right ideologies and groups in the United States, some of which endorse white nationalism, gained traction as an alternative to mainstream
conservatism in
its national politics. In 2016, the
American National Election Studies survey conducted during
Donald Trump's campaign for the presidency found that 38% of Americans expressed "strong feelings of white solidarity", 28% "strong feelings of white identity", 27% that whites suffer from discrimination in American society, while 6% agree with all these propositions. In 2020, it was reported that white nationalist groups leaving flyers, stickers, banners and posters in public places more than doubled from 1,214 in 2018 to 2,713 in 2019. According to journalist
David D. Kirkpatrick, as of mid-2024, scholars of the far right estimate that 100,000 Americans "actively participate in organized white nationalist groups". ==Heterodox views==