dc.description.abstract | This study, building on longstanding debates on “German” national socialist
(“Nazi”) and “Dutch” Calvinist influences on Afrikaner nationalism, examines
the latter’s intersecting relationships with Dutch neo-Calvinist “Christian
nationalism” and pan-Netherlandic or Diets nationalism (embracing Dutch,
Flemings and Afrikaners). Like similarly-minded Dutch (or Flemings),
Afrikaners most drawn to Diets nationalism were often those most attracted to
German-inspired Romantic volks-nationalism, of which national socialism was
the most extreme variant. Diets nationalism, volks-nationalism and “Christian
nationalism” were not mutually exclusive, but part of an overlapping transnational
web which influenced not just such outliers as volks-nationalists Piet Meyer
and Hans van Rensburg or neo-Calvinist Hendrik Stoker, but “mainstream”
Afrikaner nationalists such as Daniel Malan, Dutch-trained and, like the preeminent
Dutch neo-Calvinist, Abraham Kuyper, a conservative Reformed
churchman-turned-politician. Like volks-nationalism, Diets nationalism had a
wider appeal than German national socialism, but later often took on a far right
authoritarian aspect which in World War II discredited it in the Netherlands, as
did Afrikaner nationalist opposition to fighting Hitler. While orthodox Dutch
Calvinists moved toward a more internationalist perspective, breaking with
their South African cousins over “apartheid”, “Christian nationalism” survived
among Afrikaner nationalists, although looking more like volks-nationalism
than anything recognizably neo-Calvinist, but neither could it meaningfully be
labelled “Nazi.” | en_US |