When “Finding Your Roots” Goes Wrong

The search for identity shouldn't alienate us from our own people

I sometimes stumble on hilarious articles on Medium. The old blogging platform has recently been outmatched by Substack, but it still produces quite a lot of content. Most of it is liberal clickbait on the “secret racism” of inanimate objects or how black hair is truly magical. Occasionally, you get something out of left field. An example of that is this article entitled: “How Slavic Mythology Was Demonised, Repressed and Eventually — Almost Forgotten.”

Being naturally curious about European paganism and those who try to revive it, I clicked on it. The most surprising thing of all is that the Polish author, Katie Jgln, argued many of the same points that some right-wingers do. Jgln condemns Christianity as a foreign faith imposed on Slavs at sword point. Their true native faith is paganism and Slavs are beginning to recover their true roots–or so Jgln claims. She also argues that Slavic paganism lived on with the people through “the names of settlements, rivers, mountains, and villages. Many were hidden in the writings of medieval Christian chroniclers. Many could be found in the Slavic folk’s tales, legends, and customs. And some could even be reconstructed by comparing Slavic data with data from other Indo-European cultural traditions.” Jgln also contrasts the grim aspects of Christianity with the supposedly life-affirming aspects of Slavic paganism, much like European New Right thinkers.

She concludes her article with support for the pagan revival because “that also means that there will be a renewed interest in reconstructing our ancient languages, rites, traditions and beliefs.”

This was an article promoted by Medium and received a fair amount of attention. It has over 1000 claps at the time of this article’s publication. It may seem odd that a mainstream publisher would endorse such crypto-rightist views. But then you have to realize that the writer is no rightist at all.

Most of Jgln’s content is devoted to feminism and “LGBT rights.” Examples include: “When Will Grown-Ass Men Like Kanye West Stop Putting Down Successful Women?” and “Why Are Men Creating AI Girlfriends Only To Abuse Them and Brag About It on Reddit?” Her bio description reads:

I write and make video content about culture, politics, feminism, LGBTQ+, psychology, history, and anything else I feel like talking about. I also try to be funny from time to time, but I usually end up offending too many people (ahem, men).

In addition to juggling between multiple social media platforms, I also work with charities, NGO’s and political organizations to help raise awareness on a number of women’s issues.

While she celebrates Slavic paganism as the true faith of her people, her bio talks about how much she hates her native land. She sneers at her parents for staying in Poland instead of moving West after the fall of communism and attacks her homeland as “vodka-drenched.” 

There were clear instances of leftism in the Slavic paganism article itself. Jgln says the “oppression” of ancient Poles is the same “demonisation and harassment” waged against “Native American religion, traditional African religions, Hinduism, and even other Abrahamic faiths” by those evil Christians. 

Jgln’s paganism is just a way to signal against the dominant (white) culture of her homeland. This is unfortunately the case for many modern-day pagans–and pretty much anyone else who attempts to be different from their traditional culture. This model apes minority cultures and even imitates their language. “We are all oppressed by the same colonizers!” The difference is that the Jgln argument rails against her own ancestors as the colonizers. Poles, like every other European, became Christian. Denigrating that past as a foreign intrusion condemns the last thousand or so years of your people. It doesn’t make sense if you’re trying to reclaim a continuous identity. 

For liberals like Jgln, that’s not a problem. Her many articles attacking her own family indicate she does not want a continuous identity–she wants to make a radical break with her real roots.

That lies at the heart of all whites who seek a more authentic identity than what’s offered by mainstream American culture. As most of my readers know, white Americans aren’t offered an identity as white Americans.. We’re told that no such identity exists. You can only identify with an ethnicity (Irish, Italian, Polish, etc.). Most white Americans have little connection to whatever acceptable ethnic identity is offered to them. The ethnic affiliation generally amounts to nothing more than how much they can drink. “The Irish love to get drunk!” is hardly an identity to rally around.

But this is all that’s available to the People Without Color, as a recent Reddit thread emphasized. As the great Twitter thoughtfluencer Second City Bureaucrat pointed out, “a culture is real only if the origins are opaque (white ethnic identities, African tribes) or if it was forced on a group (Blackness on sundry African tribes).” He pointed out the many absurdities and contradictions in this mindset in a recent Twitter thread. The main point of this ridiculous standard is to attack whites. 

Bureaucrat’s point was couched in an American context, but it also applies to the Jgln article. Her paganism, unlike that of some very KEYED black metal, is to not celebrate her homeland or people, but to separate herself from them. The only way you can obtain an authentic identity is through an opaque one that distinguishes you from the white majority. 

The regime is ok with neo-pagans finding their roots if it makes them cut off their family, spit upon their recent ancestors, and view their homogenous homeland as a backward hellhole. The regime is ok with ethnic identities in America if it ensures that heritage Americans don’t see themselves as one people. And like Jgln’s claims of ancient discrimination by Christian invaders, white Americans will try to claim victim status too because their Irish/Italians/whatever non-Anglo ancestors were oppressed when they came here. That sense of grievance separates them from traditional Anglo American culture in the same way Jgln’s religious grievances separate her from traditional Polish culture.

Most right-wingers want to separate themselves from the culture of the Globalist American Empire. But that shouldn’t lead us to attach ourselves to identities that alienate us from our own people. That’s just what the GAE wants us to do.