blood and soil

Definitions

A nationalist, often fascist, ideology that sees genetic heritage (blood) and geographic territory (soil) as the most important values of a nation, typically associated with the idealisation of racial “purity”, reproductive fertility, agriculture and belligerence; examples include Nazism (cf. the concept of Lebensraum) and white nationalism in the United States.

uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“Originator of the Nazi blood-and-soil racial theory, Richard Walther Darre became Agriculture Minister in July, 1933, and announced that his chief aim was to make⟳ Germany independent of the world in respect⟳ to her food supplies.”

“Representatives of this line of thought around the world are, in many cases, echoing eco-fascist ideas that themselves are rooted in an earlier age of blood-and-soil nationalism.”

“Mr. Ramaswamy assailed the idea as a “blood and soil” conception of citizenship, one that is “un-American at its core” and “about as loony as anything the woke left has actually put⟳ up.””

CEFR level