The Differences in North American Culture

by J. Niu

To fully understand the current landscape of Canadian culture, we must first understand American culture. American culture became the single dominant cultural identity post-Cold War and it is especially relevant in the part of the world which is considered “the West.”

Canadian culture, in its current state, is just like most parts of the Western world which follow the guidelines of “Pax-Americana.” However, due to the internal contradictions of American culture and its external contradictions with Canadian culture, Canada has fell into a “cultural crisis” at the beginning of the 21st century.

First, we need to address the important differences between Canadian and American cultural, ethnic, and national identities. There is a misconception that Canadians and Americans are very similar, however, there is a clear reason why there are these two different countries in North America.

American identity since its foundation has been heavily anti-European, in the sense of America breaking from the “Old World” to begin a Liberal project in the “New World.” In the 19th century, the early American stage shows were almost all oriented around the epic tales of national hero George Washington defeating the evil British overlords and setting the land free.

American identity was based on a national mythology of a bunch of heroic Puritans escaping to a “New World,” building a dreamland of manifest destiny and heaven on earth. The American obsession with this national myth has spawned a whole religion built around it known as Mormonism where the national myth is elevated way beyond the rational world into an unquestionable religious doctrine.

In contrast, the Dominion of Canada was founded by the British Loyalists, those who did not believe in the “New World” project, and wanted to preserve the traditions, culture, and values of the “Old World” even while operating in the “New World.”

Both French Canada and Anglo Canada are heavily traditionalist, even compared to their modern European counterparts. Canadian “nice-ness” is really a preservation of British Gentleman culture during the Victorian age. On the other hand, even when France became the hub of post-modernism and “cultural progressivism”, French Canada remained traditional in family values and politics, even keeping the observance of Catholicism intact.

Where American identity is the rejection of its foundational ethnic identity, Canadian identity is the preservation of its foundational ethnic identities (both French and English, for the European, and also the influence from the many Indigenous nations). This cultural divide is the essential difference between the two countries. This has been the case on this continent since the American Revolution, and it has been the case in education, culture, and statecraft for hundreds of years since.

All things changed when Europe plundered into “the Great War”, also known as the First World War (WWI). Millions lost their homes and Europe became much more unstable and poor. Soon Europe found itself going through a revolutionary phase during the early 20th century, mass economic inequality and post-war societal trauma led to the rise of collectivist governments with Fascism or Communism. Later on, these two powerful factions in Europe fought against each other, launching another catastrophic war, known as the Second World War (WWII).

The United States was the sole surviving Western superpower post-WWII. Britain and France were in shambles, Germany was completely destroyed, and the Soviet Union was rebuilding from the ashes. America was the only industrial power that was ahead of the rest of the world.

Europe was practically rebuilt from the ground up by America with the Marshal Plan. Europe needed capital and America needed partners against the rising “red threat” from the East. This historical event not only caused American influence to become the sole dominating force of Western Europe, but also caused a chain of unexpected events in America.

Mass immigration from Europe was already taking place before WWII, and post-WWII almost half a million immigrants were immediately allowed into the United States as refugees of war. Out of these immigrants, the most influential upper class were the first to enter America, not only to escape the war, but for European oligarchs, both Communism and Fascism would mean the end of their economic and political influence within Europe.

The United States welcomed in the wealthy Europeans with open arms, along the mighty highways that span across the country, more and more little towns are built in shapes and forms that resemble Europe. Countless Neo-European settlements popped up within America.

This caused a major inherent crisis within American culture; due to its inherent anti-European nature, the national myth of America is simply not compatible with the rise of European oligarchic influence within America. American scholars at that time were writing articles warning about the potential crisis caused by mass immigration from Europe.

This ugly truth has been swept under the rug thanks to Cold War tensions between the East and the West. However, as the Cold War ended, America took on the role of global leader, especially the leader of the Western world.

During this time, we see an interesting shift in American culture. More Euro-centric cultural icons were suddenly becoming mainstream in popular media — Lord of The Rings, Song of Ice and Fire, World of Warcraft, Dungeons and Dragons — suddenly embracing America’s long-forgotten European roots because quite simply the American national myth and its anti-European sentiments were at all not compatible with America’s new role as the leader of the Western world. Further, the demographics of America had shifted so dramatically that too much European culture was brought in for America to “cut ties” with continental Europe.

The American loss of national identity led to a feeling of marginalization for the foundational Euro-Americans of Anglo heritage who trace their roots back to the settlers of the original thirteen colonies.

The new fractured American society led to the rise of a new wave of thinking, contemporary “White Nationalism.” While a historic “White nationalism” has existed in forms of colonialism, racism, and extremism in the United States for hundreds of years, but tin the post-Cold War era, this modern iteration took on an entirely new meaning. “White nationalism” here ceases to be a political ideology, but instead became an abstract feeling which unifies all people in the United States who have European roots.

The sad reality is most Euro-Americans grouped as “White” really have nothing in common with each other outside of skin color and the language they speak, for example, you cannot expect a more recent Slavic immigrant to suddenly buy into the American national myth while on the other hand, Mormons literally worship the American national myth as their religion.

This “White Nationalism” is effectively a pseudo-culture that replaces the American culture, and then proceeds to replace the cultures of European diasporas. Creating an unauthentic Euro-diaspora culture based on the division of the common folk and alienation of the man by capital.

“White-ness,” or American “White culture” is as meaningless as what is considered American “Black culture” — something in the contemporary that is largely influenced by tropes fed from the music industry, such as Hip-Hop, which is an industry not even owned by African-Americans — as both are consolidated to commodify Americans to fit into the parameters of consumerism, detached from any real national or homeland roots.

Likewise, East Asian Americans are no longer Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese, etc. Instead, a flattened American “Asian culture” is adopted drawing from disparate forms of modern entertainment, such as K-Pop and Anime, and the consumption of fast food, like Boba Tea. A similar issue also arises in the African diaspora where second-generation immigrants start to become detached from their homeland roots.

This abstraction of “race” is not only a sickness to American “White culture,” but also to Asian, African, and other cultures alike living in America. There is only the abstract “White,” “Black,” and “Asian,” not the authentic cultures of distinct nations and civilizations from the “Old World” continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Diaspora cultures built on the degeneracy of consumerism replaces what is authentic from a people’s home culture.

Through US Imperialism, these flattened diaspora “cultures” are then exported back into the diaspora’s home country, and quickly become popular around the metropolitan cities, as big cities have a much more fast-paced and consumeristic lifestyle. It is much more likely for citizens there to accept a Westernized, alienated, and consumer version of their own culture, which is why Liberal politics is much more popular in metropoles around the world relative to small towns and rural villages.

Cultural issues are seen as taboo to talk about in the West today, especially when it comes to topics like ethnicity and “race.” However, if these problems were not urgent, no one would fear the rationalization of the ugly truth. In the 21st century, the only “identity” pushed by the United States is that of consumerism where everyone is robbed of their cultural and ethnic roots.

People with no connection to their ancestral homelands live their life through a re-invented makeshift version of their own culture in America. Everyone is in a constant identity crisis, connected only through the evil concept of “race” instead of an authentic taste of culture.

This is the post-modern cultural paradigm that spawned the contemporary cultural left-wing and right-wing in the West.

In a twisted way, the post-modern left-wing resembles the chauvinism of the “civilizing mission” with what we can call “White-guilt leftism as a by-product of the American “White culture.” Ideas such as LGBTQ, intersectionality, and so-called “race equality” all comes from the core ideal of “White guilt.”

This strong belief in the “White identity” is what led to enough “White guilt” to power the Western left. A cultured person from an authentic European background wouldn’t want anything to do with things like this. For they only want to protect what values are passed down from their ancestors.

Meanwhile, White-guilt leftism comes from the strong belief that the White identity is inherently superior to the other “races.” This ideology holds the core idea that the “cis-gender white male” is the oppressor of society, inferring that Western Europeans are born more successful, everything is seen in the scope of “race,” instead of ethnicity and culture, much like the “Social Darwinist” racialist thinkers of the 19th Century.

White-guilt leftism is a complete by-product of the failure of American culture, it’s a neo-religion of sorts, akin to the aforementioned Mormonism, and resembles a form of neo-racism in the 21st Century.

Canada used to have an authentic Canadian identity and Canadian culture, however the American post-modern cultural export has caused Canada to adopt “progressivism” as a core cultural practice. The plague which has destroyed American culture is making its way swiftly into Canada.

In this chaos, the contemporary government of the Dominion of Canada tries to push “progressive” ideas such as “political correctness,” “post-nationalism,” and “multi-culturalism” in order to create a new Canadian identity, based paradoxically on the acceptance of an individualist ideology, instead of embracing a shared common culture.

However, such actions cannot realistically solve the Canadian identity crisis in the long term, nobody knows what it’s like to be a Canadian anymore.

People are taught that this is normal. This is not normal.

The death of a shared cultural identity creates a divided people with no common language among each other, everyone is stuck permanently in their own cultural ghettos, no one is actually loyal to Canada as a country, but instead only loyal to their individual economic situation in the country.

Meanwhile, the political situation led to the rise of “feeling-based politics”, the death of the shared cultural identity also means the death of all beauty standards, an accursed freedom to “do as thou wilt.” People are all of a sudden allowed to do whatever they want, as there is no real meaning behind any cultural notions.

In the realm of feeling-based politics, ethnicity, gender, and many other cultural notions have lost their meaning, everyone is free to choose whatever they want like it’s some of symbol-based dress-up game. However, what “progressives” fail to realize is that these cultural notions gained their meaning from an authentic existence in reality, they are not something that someone can suddenly adopt on the fly.

For example, gender as a concept was also destroyed with the quick rise of “gender fluidity,” all of a sudden professional academia is talking about how there are 72 genders of an infinite number of genders.

Feelings-based politics treats everything in the world only as a state of mind divorced from any actual value in real life. The “progressive” ideals of individual freedom are causing our country to be more and more divided day by day. There has to be a certain amount of societal harmony, unity, and shared cultural identity for a country to prosper.

Feelings-based politics puts the wheel in the hands of the most deranged people as all of a sudden, our cultural politics has to revolve around them, instead of fixing themselves to revolve around the country. Their rights have successfully replaced the rights of the average Canadian to be a Canadian.

Such catastrophic events have taken place before in history, for example with the Cultural Revolution in China. A small group of political extremists, known as the “Gang of Four,” crazy for political power and domination, launched a disastrous cultural war on the Chinese nation, with the goal of wiping out the people’s traditional values, religion, and family structure, plunged the nation into 8 entire years of chaos and more than 10 years of strife which followed afterward, all for their personal gain.

A lesson from this period in Chinese history is that youngsters can be easy to motivate into becoming the “red guards” spearheading of these type of social movements. Young people are more likely to be rebellious, especially in their adolescence, and can be turned into pawns of such a movement which at the end of the day does not benefit them at all.

When the Chinese nation finally recovered from this tragedy, the “Gang of Four” was put on trial for their crimes against the nation and its people, for the war they waged against the people. We are going through a very similar phase right now in Canada. Young people are being falsely motivated by post-modern politicians to wage a disastrous cultural war against the country, our roots and foundations are being destroyed as these politicians force more “White-guilt leftist” or “progressive” culture onto everyone.

Everyone is constantly angry with each other. More young people are choosing Queer lifestyles instead of settling down for a family. Birth rates are dramatically declining while the overall population is rapidly increasing due to mass immigration policies, but the level of onboarding new waves of immigrants is overriding the needed time for their integration. While many come to this land for its welfare and economic opportunities, with with the cost of living, unemployment, and housing crisis, what was attractive about Canada is quickly fading.

If Canada’s “first world status” does come crashing down, without a common culture, what will there be left of Canada?