Oswald Spengler

Can the West and its peoples be saved? And what will this take–particularly if we are concerned with a long-term solution rather than a last ditch “stop gap?” Can a new High Culture of the West arise to secure the existence of the peoples of the West for an extended time frame? What characteristics should such a new culture have?

I will assume the reader is familiar with the civilizational model of Oswald Spengler, a model essentially adopted by Francis Parker Yockey in his various works on the West and its future possibilities. With a Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter of a High Culture, “Winter” is the phase of oncoming oblivion. It is clear, at least to me (and it seems that Michael O’Meara agrees with this assessment), that we are in the “Winter” of our current modern Western (i.e., “Faustian”) High Culture. And, immersed within this decay, bereft of an overriding organizing principle to provide a spiritual structure for its continued existence, the white race is dying, failing to reproduce, being displaced by aliens, and offering an inadequate level of resistance to the death of the West.

In actual physical weather/climate seasons, spring follows winter. Can the same hold true for particular peoples and their High Cultures? If civilizational (re)birth will lead to long-term racial survival, should we at least consider the possibilities? Of course, one cannot predict with full accuracy if a civilizational (re)birth will take place, much less the precise form such an event would take. Further, one cannot pre-plan and create a High Culture in the manner of a general formulating a strategy and then leading troops into battle. A High Culture must develop along its own lines, according to factors not entirely within (conscious) human control. However, one can, and should, examine the evidence, consider the possibilities, and to the extent it is possible, encourage those trends leading to a civilizational (re)birth. Further, these trends could, and should, be guided, to the extent possible, in directions that would be most fruitful and most consistent with the nature of our people.

A starting point is to consider our present High Culture, the dying remnants of which we see around us. The so-called “Western” or “Faustian” civilization has been described by Spengler and is summarized thus (emphasis added):

. . . the modern Westerners being Faustian. According to its theories, we are now living in the winter time of the Faustian civilization. His description of the Faustian civilization is one where the populace constantly strives for the unattainable—making Western Man a proud but tragic figure, for while he strives and creates he secretly knows the actual goal will never be reached.

Here we see two defining characteristics of the “Faustian” civilization of the modern (i.e., post-Classical) West: first, a focus on infinity and the unknown, and second, that the striving toward that focus will always be unsuccessful; the objectives of Western Man are always “unattainable.” The second point, and its implications, will be further discussed below. For now, let us accept the Spenglerian model and also accept that we are in the Winter of the Faustian culture. Now, the Spenglerian school, steeped in “stoic acceptance” (“pessimism”) will advise us to accept, and make the most of, our circumstances. The era in which we live in is what it is, and, like a Roman soldier on guard under erupting Vesuvius, we must stand at our post until the end, until all is enveloped in inescapable decay (civilizational entropy, if you will).

But if race and culture are linked, the dissipation of the culture means the destruction of the race. Or does it? The Faustian is not the first High Culture of Europe; it was preceded by the Classical. Spengler and his follower Yockey break with previous cultural interpretations to stress the sharp discontinuity between Classical and Faustian. These are perceived as being two distinct High Cultures, as different from each other as each is to, say, the Egyptian or the Magian.

Therefore, from the same article on Spengler’s work, we read (emphasis added):

Spengler borrows frequently from mathematical philosophy. He holds that the mathematics and art of a civilization reveal its world-view. He notes that in Greek classical mathematics that there are only integers and no real concepts of limits or infinity. Therefore, without a concept of the infinite, all events of the distant past were viewed as equally distant, thus Alexander the Great had no problem declaring himself a descendant of a god. On the other hand, the western world—which has concepts of the zero, the infinite, and the limit—has a historical world-view which places a high amount of importance on exact dates.

Similarly, Revilo Oliver writes (emphasis added):

Spengler identifies as two entirely separate and discrete civilizations the Classical (“Apollonian”), c. 1100 B.C.-A.D. 300, and the Western (“Faustian”), c. A.D. 900-2200. These are the two for which we have the fullest information, and between them Spengler establishes some of his most brilliant synchronisms (e.g., Alexander the Great corresponds to Napoleon). Even a century ago, this dichotomy would have seemed almost mad, for everyone knew and took for granted that whatever might be true of alien cultures, our own was a continuation, or, at least, revival of the Classical. Spengler’s denial of that continuity was the most radical and startling aspect of his historical synthesis, but so great has been his overshadowing influence that it has been accepted by a majority of the many subsequent writers on the philosophy of history, of whom we may mention here only Toynbee, Raven, Bagby, and Brown. (20) The Classical, we are told, was a civilization like the Egyptian, now dead and gone and with no organic connection with our own. . . . Spengler (whom Brown especially follows in this respect) supports his drastic dichotomy by impressively contrasting Graeco-Roman mathematics and technology with our own; from that contrast he deduces differences in the perception of space and time, exhibited particularly in music, and reaches the conclusion that the Classical Weltanschauung was essentially static, desiring and recognizing only a strictly delimited and familiar world, whereas ours is dynamic and exhibits a passionate yearning for the infinite and the unknown. One can advance various objections to the generalizations I have so curtly and inadequately summarized (e.g., is the difference in outlook really greater than that between the “classical” literature of Eighteenth-Century Europe and the Romanticism of the following era?), but the crucial point is whether the differences, which belong to the order that we must call spiritual for want of a better term, (21) are fundamental or epiphenomenal.

I have tended toward the “epiphenomenal” explanation – but in any case, one can agree with Oliver’s overarching conclusion in his various works: either the Classical and Faustian are different yet connected phases of the same Civilization, or, even if completely distinct, Western Man is capable of producing multiple High Cultures. Either way, one can conclude two things: (1) a successor to the Faustian High Culture is possible and has a precedent, and (2) this successor will be intimately connected in important ways to its predecessor (s) (even if Spengler and Yockey would deny this could be possible).

Therefore, either the Classical and Faustian are indeed linked (by a generalized common gene pool, “racial soul,” and Western outlook) or, if they are indeed distinct, they are not completely unconnected, as they derive from a common wellspring or foundation (again, the generalized gene pool, “racial soul,” and Western mindset of greater individualism and empiricism compared to other peoples and cultures). Not only are the Classical and the Faustian in some sense linked but, contrary to Spengler and Yockey–and, indeed, a blasphemy of the Spenglerian school that rejects a linear history–there is a sense of progression, in that the worldview of the Faustian is broader than that of the Classical; indeed, this greater breadth of vision is a defining characteristic of the Faustian. This breadth being manifested in such phenomena as high level technics, and a mass knowledge base of science, history, philosophy and morality-ethics, the foundation is therefore laid for a new High Culture of a vision even broader than that of the Faustian. A Spenglerian would argue that any new High Culture of the West, even if possible (and they may deny this possibility), would be completely disconnected to the “Faustian” aspects of the former, (i.e., present) Western Faustian High Culture. However, I argue that, having being awakened to the universe at large, it is unlikely that the white man would create a new High Culture that would be insular, rejecting the infinite. To the (albeit limited) extent we can predict, or even influence, the development of a new High Culture, a potential direction is one that is not purely “Faustian”–in the sense of striving for the unattainable. Instead, one can project a future High Culture that is based upon the ultimate and successful (eventual) achievement of what was previously considered to be “unattainable.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

I would argue that the Christian foundation of the Faustian High Culture is responsible for the fact that the ultimate goals that Western man strives toward end up being “unattainable” – and secretly known by him to be “unattainable.” The Christian mindset places inherent limits within the mind of Western man, so he is doomed to ultimately fail even if full success is theoretically possible (eventually). After all, the focus of Christianity is God and not Man, it is “salvation” and not overcoming, and it is a focus on “the next world” and not this, our real world. For man to achieve godhood–or to even have that as a goal–is a form of “blasphemy,” it is something that cannot be countenanced. Therefore, ultimate failure must occur, for attainment of the “Faustian” goal (attainment itself would then make the event no longer be truly “Faustian”) is simply not possible in a High Culture based upon Christianity. The full development of Western man has been restrained by an alien religion that has placed shackles on his mind and his soul. Nietzsche well recognized the constraints imposed by (Judeo-) Christianity; in his The Antichrist we find (emphasis added):

Has any one ever clearly understood the celebrated story at the beginning of the Bible–of God’s mortal terror of science? . . . No one, in fact, has understood it. This priest-book par excellence opens, as is fitting, with the great inner difficulty of the priest: he faces only one great danger; ergo, ”God” faces only one great danger.–

The old God, wholly “spirit,” wholly the high-priest, wholly perfect, is promenading his garden: he is bored and trying to kill time. Against boredom even gods struggle in vain. What does he do? He creates man–man is entertaining. . . But then he notices that man is also bored. God’s pity for the only form of distress that invades all paradises knows no bounds: so he forthwith creates other animals. God’s first mistake: to man these other animals were not entertaining–he sought dominion over them; he did not want to be an “animal” himself.–So God created woman. In the act he brought boredom to an end–and also many other things! Woman was the second mistake of God.–”Woman, at bottom, is a serpent, Heva”–every priest knows that; “from woman comes every evil in the world”–every priest knows that, too. Ergo, she is also to blame for science. . . It was through woman that man learned to taste of the tree of knowledge.–What happened? The old God was seized by mortal terror. Man himself had been his greatest blunder; he had created a rival to himself; science makes men godlike–it is all up with priests and gods when man becomes scientific!–Moral: science is the forbidden per se; it alone is forbidden. Science is the first of sins, the germ of all sins, the original sin. This is all there is of morality.–”Thou shalt not know”–the rest follows from that.–God’s mortal terror, however, did not hinder him from being shrewd. How is one to protect one’s self against science? For a long while this was the capital problem. Answer: Out of paradise with man! Happiness, leisure, foster thought–and all thoughts are bad thoughts!–Man must not think.–And so the priest invents distress, death, the mortal dangers of childbirth, all sorts of misery, old age, decrepitude, above all, sickness–nothing but devices for making war on science! The troubles of man don’t allow him to think. . . Nevertheless–how terrible!–, the edifice of knowledge begins to tower aloft, invading heaven, shadowing the gods–what is to be done?--The old God invents war; he separates the peoples; he makes men destroy one another (–the priests have always had need of war….). War–among other things, a great disturber of science !–Incredible! Knowledge, deliverance from the priests, prospers in spite of war.–So the old God comes to his final resolution: “Man has become scientific–there is no help for it: he must be drowned!”

Indeed. If “the meek shall inherit the Earth” there is no place for any human striving for the infinite that is successful, and which places Man on the same plane as God. If meekness, humility, the “humble lamb of God” is the foundational archetype of a culture, then of course infinity and the unknown will always be unattainable. “Thou shalt not know”: it is amazing how much we have achieved despite that, and these remarkable Western achievements coming have occurred–not by coincidence–primarily during the Autumn and Winter periods of the Faustian High Culture. Only when the constraints imposed by the Christian-defined culture have to a large extent dissipated has the a priori acceptance of failure been weakened. The problem is that with a decaying, dying High Culture, this (partial) emancipation from the cult of humility will go for naught. Only a new High Culture built upon the fundamental concept of human transcendence, and on the attainment of infinity/the unknown, will allow Western Man to fulfill his density. The crumbling ruins of the previous High Culture can serve as building blocks for the future, certainly, they can provide inspiration, certainly, and be a source of pride, certainly. But we need to look toward the Future, and not stand guard over a dying, or dead, Past, analogous to Spengler’s Roman soldier.

While I mean no disrespect to anyone’s beliefs, be they Christian or Pagan, I do not see a revival of ancient pagan gods as a forward-thinking improvement over the decay of Faustianism. Replacing Jesus with Thor, in my mind, simply replaces one fantasy-crutch with another. White men should no longer require any exogenous gods, whether new or old; we instead should strive toward godhood for our race. It is time for the white man to grow up and put away the fantasies of childhood, fantasies of gods and external intelligent forces controlling a destiny that should be ours, and ours alone, to mold. The motto of the Classical World was “Know Thyself,” while that of the Faustian Age was a combination of “Thou Shalt Not Know” with “Thou Shalt Try to Know and Thou Shalt Fail.” I propose that the new High Culture of the West have the motto: “Thou Shalt Know and Thou Shalt Overcome.” This will usher in an era in which Western Man unlocks his potential by unlocking the shackles imposed by an assumed inferiority to imaginary gods.

Francis Parker Yockey

The following quote from Yockey’s The Enemy of Europe summarizes the palingenetic objective that we could, if we so wished, strive for:

Our European Mission is to create the Culture-State-Nation-Imperium of the West, and thereby we shall perform such deeds, accomplish such works, and so transform our world that our distant posterity, when they behold the remains of our buildings and ramparts, will tell their grandchildren that on the soil of Europe once dwelt a tribe of gods.

In other words, no imaginary gods. It is Man that will become “God.” In the book The Portable Nietzsche, editor Walter Kaufmann interprets Nietzsche’s “overman” thus:

what is called for is not a super-brute but a human being who has created for himself that unique position in the cosmos that the Bible considered his birthright.

That was going well until that last part – “The Bible.” No, Mr. Kaufman, the Bible does not consider the Overman to be the ultimate birthright of humanity but instead the “last man” as the “prize” instead. It is we who must choose what our “birthright” is, not the wild fantasies of “the Bible.” However, that being so, the rest of the description is sound, if we consider that it is to be applied to the race as a whole and not only to selected individuals within the race. No more “proud, tragic” failure in “striving for the unattainable” in the “Faustian” culture – instead the Overman Culture will be characterized by the proud successful attainment of the infinite. That is what a hopeful individual can project as the new High Culture of the West, with links to the Classical and the Faustian, but surpassing both in the aim and objective of the human spirit. That is what Western Destiny can and should be.

What can we do to get things on the right track?

Although the Jewish author Isaac Asimov may not be popular among many white gentile racial nationalists, his Foundation series can provide a useful analogy here. “The Foundation” was meant to jumpstart a new civilization after the collapse of the “Galactic Empire,” so that the post-collapse “era of barbarism” would be a mere thousand years, instead of 30,000. Facing as we do the collapse of the West through the Winter of the Faustian age, it may be prudent to lay the seeds of a new emergent white, Western civilization for the long term, as we also fight the more short-term and medium-term battles to preserve the white race and save as much of Western Faustian civilization as possible. Without these shorter range objectives, the long term civilizational (re)birth will not be possible. Conversely, without a civilizational (re)birth, long-term white preservationism would be questionable.

So, there are two things that need to be going on here. First is the ongoing struggle for white racial preservationism and to save as much of the Faustian culture as possible, to serve as a knowledge base and building blocks for the new High Culture of the West. Second, an effort must be initiated to begin the process of laying the groundwork for this new High Culture. As indicated above, of course a High Culture is an organic phenomenon that cannot be created in a pre-planned form and artificially imposed on a people. However, it is possible to plant the seeds and to have some choice as to which seeds are planted. And then, we can nurture the seedling as it grows, and as it develops according to its own inherent character. This we can do and this we must do.

This is a serious matter requiring forward-thinking strategy of an extreme visionary character, not something that can be productively “discussed” on “blog threads” or other (typically inane) public forums. It is not something that can occur overnight. This is a long-term, multi-generational project that needs to be undertaken by dedicated individuals who wish to lay the foundation of something great and noble for posterity. This will not be not any “quick fix” whose results may be seen in a decade or two; instead, this is a project that has the potential to influence the course of human history and it must be conducted on that higher level.

Therefore, this essay is simply a call for action and an initial and cursory consideration of the possibilities. If such a project is ever initiated, it should not, and must not, devolve into the mundane “movement” minutiae that many obsess over, nor can it be linked to the more serious, yet short-term, necessary “stop-gap” activism required to save our people and culture today. This is another matter, on another level, entirely.

Many are called; few are chosen. The Future Awaits.

Introduction

The work of Dr. Frank Salter is of great relevance to racial nationalism and secession. Dr. Salter correctly identifies genetic interests as ultimate interests. Population group interests are ethnic genetic interests, the importance of which is amplified by the large numbers of people who constitute ethnic and racial groups. These interests are threatened by mass immigration and by the multicultural state. Every population group requires a territory in which the continuity of that group can be ensured. Introduction of alien peoples into a territory eventually fills its carrying capacity and diminishes the numbers of the native group. Therefore, the optimal situation for genetic continuity is the ethnostate, in which territorial carrying capacity is utilized for a specific group’s advantage.

In the United States, mass immigration and a multiracial population is highly maladaptive for the genetic interests of European-Americans (“white Americans”). Therefore, it is rational to consider secessionist ideas for safeguarding European-American genetic interests. In this essay, I will evaluate several ideas regarding secessionism, submit my own tentative proposal, and conclude with some final thoughts.

“Reconquest” and “Citizenism”

One school of thought rejects the idea of secession and instead proposes “reconquest,” that the white majority retake control of America.  This “reconquest” would entail turning back the clock to a time of no Third World immigration (legal or illegal), no affirmative action, and no “civil rights” legislation. In the typical version of this scenario, America would still have a large non-white minority population, but that population would become politically quiescent, and the white majority more politically active. Whites would impose laws designed to both maintain their status as the demographic majority as well as reaffirm the principle of freedom of association in employment, housing, and schooling. The most notable proponent of this view was Sam Francis.

While some claim that this scenario is more “realistic” than secession, one wonders if it actually is. Given the rapid decline in white demographics, and the certainty that most non-whites would oppose “reconquest,” this scenario would require a large majority of whites, including white liberals, to support strongly pro-white policies and political candidates. It would necessitate forcing mobilized minority groups, emboldened by decades of multiculturalist advantage, to fade into the background and accept a reversal of their growing power. It would require strict immigration control, at a time when Americans cannot even stem the flow of illegals, and it would require that the white population increase its birthrate to retain its numerical advantage over minority groups.

This scenario would require constant vigilance, guarding against changing demographics, unrest amongst the disgruntled minorities, as well as the possibility of whites agreeing to restore the multicultural regime. To avoid inter-racial crime as well as miscegenation, strict segregation would have to be maintained. Thus, “reconquest” would entail enormous continuing costs, and while such a regime would be superior to the current multicultural system, a large and potentially dangerous minority population would remain. The race-culture problem would not be solved, merely adjusted and made more tolerable.

Granted, some versions of “reconquest” stipulate that all non-whites living in America be repatriated to their ancestral homelands. While this option would maximize territory for the white population, it likely will be more difficult to achieve than the more politically feasible option of ethnostate formation. While repatriation of alien elements is absolutely essential for our crowded European homeland, which is after all the birthplace of the white race, in my opinion the cost-benefit ratio for racial preservation on the North American continent generally favors the ethnostate solution. Separation would be more palatable to all involved, and would result in less damage to the white population and to the nation’s infrastructure, compared to a “reconquest” requiring full expulsion of non-whites.

I also oppose the “citizenist” concept of Steve Sailer. Sailer promotes the idea that our “ingroup” should be that of “fellow American citizens” and that we should build an aracial American identity, focusing on “what’s best for Americans.” Unfortunately, that is already the mindset of most white Americans, and that is exactly the formula for continued dispossession and displacement. Despite Sailer’s claim that “citizenism” is more “realistic” than “white nationalism,” it is folly to believe that ethnocentric non-whites will agree to eschew ethnic identity politics and work for what is best for “most Americans,” when “most Americans” are still white. Real differences in ethnic interests cannot be plastered over by a legally defined status of “citizen.” The only people who would play the game of “citizenism” would be whites, putting them at a competitive disadvantage against organized, ethnocentric minorities.

“Citizenism” does not solve the race problem. In fact, if we are all “equal citizens,” what justification is there for maintaining the homogeneity of a neighborhood or opposing miscegenation? If “high-IQ” Asians are “productive citizens” like white Americans, and if the Asians superficially mouth (but not actually practice) the platitudes of “citizenism,” why not accept mass Asian immigration and displace white Americans? To say that such immigration would not be “best for most Americans” is to imply that “most Americans” have an inherent interest not to be displaced by biological and cultural aliens. Thus, one would need to identify the differences that would make that displacement maladaptive for “most Americans,” and these differences are those of race and culture. In the end, differences of ethnic interest trump patriotic idealism; actual biological and civilizational group membership trumps a manufactured legal group membership. “Citizenism” is exactly the opposite of what we require, which is for whites to defend their specific group interests.

Michael Hart’s Partition Plan

Professor Michael Hart deserves credit for proposing a separatist plan that incorporates a degree of freedom of association, in that an “integrated” state is set aside for those who prefer to live in a multiracial society. That is fair and reasonable. Integrationists do not have the right to force their ideals on separatists; similarly, separatists do not have the right to enforce their views on those who sincerely value diversity. Of course, the decision between separatism and integrationism must be informed, made with all the available facts, and within a free and open marketplace of ideas.

The fundamental problem with the Hart plan is that he proposes only three states: the Integrationist State, a Black Separatist State for those African-Americans who reject integrationism, and a White Separatist State (WSS) for whites who likewise choose greater homogeneity. What about Asians, racially mixed Hispanics, non-European Caucasians, and others who are neither “white” nor “black,” and who may not wish to live in the integrationist state? They have no state or states of their own. Worse, Hart asserts that the so-called WSS may actually include “Asians and others.”

Essentially, Hart is proposing a multiracial, “diverse” “white separatist” state. According to the Hart plan, while African Americans will be given the choice of true separation and homogeneity, European-Americans (as well as Asian-Americans and Hispanic-Americans, Arab-Americans, and others) will not have that choice. The only real separation Hart allows for these latter groups is separation from African-Americans. This is quite clearly unacceptable–promoting diversity within a plan for separatism–and means that an enormous amount of political, social, and economic sacrifice will be made for very limited gain: separation from African Americans but not from any other group. Although the Hart plan has one strong point, that those who value diversity be allowed their choice, the rest of the plan is extremely flawed. We need to look elsewhere for more serious ideas concerning racial nationalism and secession.

The New Racial Compact Partition Plan

In the first draft of this essay, I presented some collegial and constructive criticisms of Richard McCulloch’s “Racial Compact” partition plan. However, it became necessary to rewrite this section, since Mr. McCulloch has updated his Racial Compact plan, as stated in the comments section of TOQ Online:

The revision now basically includes all Gentile Europeans in the same country, instead of proposing separation from the more hard-core distinct Mediterranean types that make up much of the population of southern Europe. This makes my proposal consistent with the “official” TOQ definition of our racial “in-group” although at a racial cost to the northern European racial identity of the country. Still, it has reached the point where it now seems totally unrealistic, even quixotic, to try to separate the hard-core Mediterranean elements in the US population from other Europeans, as so many of them are now largely assimilated, and even more difficult to draw some line between assimilable and unassimilable elements in the Italian-American, Greek-American, or Spanish-American populations. Of course, in Europe itself we still could and should encourage the preservation of the different racial groups in their own historic nations, even perhaps northern Italians as distinct from southern Italians, but in the European-American population it now seems that the political cost of promoting such an effort would exceed the racial benefit.

I essentially agree with these comments (including the points concerning Europe), and see this as a positive development. The updated racial partition map (as of mid-March 2010) at the Racial Compact website now proposes a more general European-American ethnostate, which consists predominantly of white Americans of northern/northwest European ancestry/racial type (termed “Nordish”), with smaller populations of “Alpine-Dinaric-Ladogan” types (essentially central and some northeast Europeans) and “Euro-Mediterraneans” (essentially southern Europeans). This updated partition plan is generally consistent with the “alternative plan” I had outlined in my original partition essay (which is also included in the present revised essay, see below), with a few, relatively minor, differences.

With this new Racial Compact partition proposal, increased possibilities exist for cooperation between various European-American and European peoples on racial preservationist endeavors. I am confident that preservationist activists can incorporate the racial interests of all European-descended peoples in plans for the survival and rebirth of the West. Therefore, besides the actual details of specific separation proposals, it is equally important that all peoples of European descent have a “seat at the table” where decisions about the fate of the West are decided–whatever those decisions end up being. Although history may lead us in directions somewhat off course from carefully laid out plans and proposals, what will lead us to eventual success in achieving our objectives is a sense of teamwork and of a shared destiny.

Preeminence of Core Founding Population and Similar Groups Must be Maintained

Of course it is legitimate to seek to defend narrower ethnies and ethny characteristics which one admires or identifies with. And of course different European populations have some different characteristics and varying levels of genetic kinship. Therefore, for example, it is reasonable for Germany to reject Spanish or Italian immigrants and vice versa. I don’t see that retaining national identity in this way endangers peace or unity in the name of shared interests. However, this position, while appropriate for the homelands of Europe itself, cannot reasonably be fully extended to the United States, where extensive intra-European ethnic intermingling, and assimilation of varied European subgroups/ethnies, has occurred.

I think the 1924 national origins act had it generally right. The core American population is drawn from all parts of Europe, but most of all from England, then Britain, then Germanic (northwest) Europe, then, lastly, southern and eastern Europe. The relative predominance of northwest European populations to America’s white ethnic makeup is a fact, and it is understandable to protect the preeminence of these groups (i.e., British first and then other northwest Europeans). Hence, Lothrop Stoddard, while advocating assimilation of the “white ethnics” in Reforging America, was absolutely correct to assert that maintaining the preeminence of the older, northwest European stocks was a prerequisite for any assimilation of the “white ethnics.” I fully agree with Stoddard’s views in that regard. Indeed, one can argue that acceptance of Stoddard’s prerequisite is a “litmus test” for “ethnic” assimilation into white America. The northwest European core population should assimilate the “ethnics” and not vice versa; the demographic, sociopolitical, and cultural-traditional dominance of the former group must be maintained throughout the assimilatory process. And, if there are some “ethnic” elements who, by their behavior and other characteristics, prove to be truly unassimilable (here I have in mind Jersey Shore types and their equivalents), these can be justifiably excluded from the preservationist project. However, “ethnics” of good stock who are assimilated can be productively included.

An Alternative Plan

I agree in principle that those who strongly believe in the multicultural model should have the chance to live according to their beliefs and life choices; thus, limited territory set aside for an integrated state is included in my plan. It is expected that, given the free marketplace of ideas and dissemination of racial facts that would precede separation, the vast majority of European-Americans would choose to live in an ethnostate; the integrated state would be a relatively minor entity suitable for those “white malcontents” whose presence in an ethnostate would be disruptive and untenable.

A more fundamental part of this plan deals with (normal, non-integrationist) European-Americans, who are here defined as American citizens (and permanent residents) of indigenous European ancestry. First, all European-Americans who wish to be separated from persons of non-European origins would be so separated. Thus, all European-Americans must have the option to live in an ethnostate. The predominant territory of the present United States will serve as the European-American homeland. It would be premature to discuss in detail the particular boundaries of this homeland, but it should include coastal regions, particularly the East Coast which faces Europe. Non-European peoples will be able to form their own ethnostates, with territorial size being proportional to population; in all cases, every attempt will be made to provide groups with ecologically viable niches.

Therefore, the first round of separation will divide the American landmass between a general European-American homeland, various non-European ethnostates which can subdivide as they wish, and, possibly, an integrated multicultural state. It may well be that separation can stop here, which is likely to be the most politically feasible and palatable outcome for most white Americans.

However, in theory, there could also be a secondary phase that would allow further separation amongst the European-Americans; those who have a strong identity with a narrower focus, and who desire greater homogeneity, could also have their own autonomous territories, proportional in size to population. While many possibilities exist, it is most likely that a separatist plan analogous to the revised Racial Compact proposal and/or the general European-American homeland described here, would turn out to be the optimal combination of political practicality and racial preservationism.

At the same time, the traditional peoples and cultures of Europe must be preserved in their specific homelands, and ethno-regionalism within a broader confederation will be an effective way of maximizing ethnoracial preservationism in the white homeland. Therefore, keeping in mind the ties of kinship and of civilization that exist between European-derived peoples, this plan envisions that all of the Euro-ethnostates (America, Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) would be confederated. Through economy of scale and synergistic cooperation for defense and other large scale projects, the confederation idea more easily allows regionalism to be maintained. Any small and isolated Euro ethnostate is unlikely to successfully stand alone in the world arena, particularly when confronted with civilizational blocs opposed to the West (e.g., China, Islam).

However, behind the protective shield of the confederation, regionalism can flourish, allowing for the creation of ethnostates representing more concentrated pools of genetic interest. Such a confederation does not imply panmixia, migration between confederated states, or a lack of local independence; the states making up this confederation would have full local autonomy, and would police their borders in order to safeguard their unique biological and cultural characteristics.

Whatever is ultimately decided, the plans should be conducted within the framework of pan-European comity and cooperation, according to an honest appraisal of all the biocultural facts, without violating any group’s racial identities and racial rights, and in the context of a broader Western Confederation that can preserve and defend our greater race and civilization. The fundamental approach is to realize that broader and narrower racial and civilizational concerns need not be mutually exclusive. They should in fact be complementary.

This global plan is generally consistent with the description of pan-European ethnic genetic interests as a concentric series of circles, in which greater genetic interest is with those groups most similar, while lesser, but still real, genetic interests exist in more diluted form for more distant groups. The scheme outlined here on the one hand recognizes the fundamental similarities, kinship, comity, and cultural cohesion between varied European peoples; however, on the other hand, it recognizes differences and allows for these differences to be preserved, when desired and where practically possible.

In summary, a comprehensive Western nationalism needs to preserve and defend the racial interests, identities, and rights of all persons of European descent. This by no means implies global intra-European panmixia, but requires taking seriously the racial identities, racial interests, and racial rights of all European-derived peoples

Components of Identity

Questions of group identity are fundamental in formulating the ingroup boundaries of prospective ethnostates. What characteristics are particularly important for group identity? As Salter makes clear in On Genetic Interests, genetic interests are ultimate interests. The neo-Darwinian synthesis defines fitness and adaptive behavior in terms of genetic continuity and genetic representation in future generations. Thus, the ultimate striving of biological organisms, the driving force of the development of evolved life, is toward reproducing the genotype; the phenotype is the vehicle by which this is accomplished.

The foundation of ethnoracial identity is based upon kinship and ancestry in an extended family tree encompassing one’s co-ethnics. While there is certainly a rough approximation, particularly on a group level, between genetic and phenotypic distance, it is the former which is the more direct and objective measure of kinship and ultimate interests. After all, the best measure of genetic interests is genetic information itself. Therefore, while of course phenotype and culture/civilization are crucially important factors to be considered, I view as flawed any racial nationalist worldview that does not give primacy to the ultimate interest of genetic continuity.

However, that said, genes are not all there is to identity. Genetic interests may be ultimate interests, but proximate interests are important as well. More to the point, ultimate and proximate interests cannot be truly separated, as they influence each other. Behavioral traits that influence culture are likely heritable. Conversely, proximate issues such as culture, religion, and sociopolitical beliefs influence the pursuit of genetic interests.

Traditional Christians who identify with the Occident are more likely to promote European genetic interests than are Buddhists, Hindus, or Muslims who identify with the Orient. It is highly likely that the Turkish gene pool is further from the European median than is the Greek. However, it is theoretically possible that a given individual Greek and a given individual Turk may not be genetically significantly different. But this is not the whole story. A traditionalist Greek of European Christian background, who identifies with the West, is likely to have a quite different view of European genetic interests than an Asian Turk who identifies with the East.

Culture matters. The civilizational divide of “the West against the Rest” matters. Even if the genetic gradients between certain areas are not very steep, superimposed on top of these genetic differences are profound differences in civilization and culture. The whole composite picture distinguishes the “Men of the West” from others. It is not biology alone, although genetic interests are paramount. It is not ethnic identity alone, or culture/civilization alone. It is all these things together, reinforcing each other. The organic solidarity of the West can be our shield and our sword, protecting our genetic interests from those non-Western competitors who threaten us all.

Practical Possibilities

Of course, the practical aspects of secessionist plans are questionable. However, secession represents a long term goal to which we aspire. Further, articulating a separatist plan, even one that has little chance of attainment in the foreseeable future, has an important symbolic importance. Defining the boundaries of “us” for the purposes of separatism also defines the boundaries of “us” for everyday activism, and for various forms of sociopolitical organization within the present multicultural establishment.

Even if a given separatist plan seems to have no immediate prospects of success, the specifics of the plan, particularly the “in/out” designations, provide the foundation upon which activists, reasonably seen as “in,” can cooperate to achieve their mutual interests. A proper separatist proposal will provide a framework in which activists–even those who prefer specific narrower ingroups—can still cooperate in a collegial manner, since such a plan will not violate any group’s legitimate identity, nor marginalize the group by a de facto ejection from membership in the Western family of peoples.

Obstacles

The reader is likely familiar with the varied obstacles to secession, and I will only touch upon some of these here. Virtually the entire American establishment–politicians, celebrities, academics, businessmen–speaks in one voice in favor of the multiracial, multicultural experiment. Further, we are told that race is an “illusion,” and that “socially constructed” racial groupings do not differ in innate intelligence or in any other meaningful traits. Dissident voices are suppressed; readers are familiar with the problems of individuals such as Kevin MacDonald, J. Philippe Rushton, and James Watson.

The Republican Party serves as a safety valve for white discontent and directs traditionally minded whites toward dead-end issues. Even among those more familiar with the race problem, one may encounter a patriotic resistance to secession; thus, a maladaptive “rally around the flag” mentality, geared to aracial constitutional patriotism, short-circuits any sense of ethnic identity politics. Some people draw away from secessionist ideas because of the perceived economic and social costs; some may fear civil war. Foreign policy concerns must be considered; an America in the throes of a secessionist break-up could not effectively oppose the aggressive objectives of, for example, a resurgent China.

There is no easy way to get around these obstacles. I would suggest a sustained effort to legitimize and mainstream “white identity politics” and secessionism; perhaps this can be initially achieved by political campaigns at the level of local congressional districts. It is absolutely crucial that these politics replace the dead-end of “implicit whiteness” with an open and explicit call to defend specifically white (European) American interests. It will be essential to bring Salter’s ideas to the thoughtful fraction of the population; it is high time the debate shifted from proximate issues to fundamental concerns about demographic displacement and the continuity of our people. Translating the work of Salter into practical biopolitics is a challenge that must be met.

Finally, given the choice between “balkanization” and “citizenism,” we must always choose the former. As Salter states in On Genetic Interests, for a people being displaced, the only thing worse than a multiculturalism that does not work is one that does. “Citizenism” is nothing more or less than a “repair and reform” job to make destructive multiculturalism more workable and sustainable.

Conclusion

It is unlikely that any of the separatist schemes discussed here will be achieved in the foreseeable future. This is not defeatism, since I propose that we pursue the objective of secession despite the odds; I believe that the separatist option is the only way to ensure the long term survival of Europeans on American soil. However, it is crucial to understand reality as we face the future. While we must constantly strive for the separatist solution, it is important to realize that, if this goal is ever achieved, few if any of those reading this essay will get to see this “promised land.” Each generation has its own battles to fight. We will do what we can today.

However, we should understand the benefits of current discussions of secession. The short-term and medium-term objectives that we will set and meet will themselves have inherent value, even independent of the final goal of secession. We will organize. We will articulate a vision for the future. We will enter the sociopolitical realm, to the extent possible, and promote agendas consistent with the interests of peoples of European descent. We will delineate the boundaries of our varied ingroups and establish cooperative networks when and where interests overlap.

The point of this essay is not to detail the specific characteristics of a separatist ethnostate, but to establish a general framework within which individuals and groups can find their proper place in this endeavor. We need to lay the foundation for the short-term and medium-term projects that fall within the scope of the lifetimes of the present readers of this journal.

Forward looking people of many ethnic backgrounds can see major conflicts on the horizon in which the white majority will fight back. We can expect the number of white nationalist groups to multiply as market demand grows for this brand of politics. Therefore, different people, with varying agendas, will attempt to define the mass white nationalism that is likely to arise in the next 20 years in one form or another. Discussions of separatism and secession, albeit premature from a strictly practical standpoint, are part of this attempt to define the future movement. Some of these directions will prove unfruitful. Some of the emerging groups will fail, some will merge, and some will split. Many will apparently achieve little or anything of value, but to the extent that they may get some serious and thoughtful individuals involved in the process, some good may come of it. People they attract will be primed for more authentic ideas.

It is not possible to completely separate proximate and ultimate interests. The memes which we will formulate need to be forged into the intellectual weapons required to defend our genes. It is hoped that this essay will constitute a positive addition to our memetic arsenal.

These are early days and one cannot make any definitive conclusions about A3P at this point. However, some progress has been made, and the party has put forth some initial positions on major issues, so it is worthwhile to examine these. Readers are urged to look at A3P’s program and policies. I have no major disagreement with their stance on crime, economy, education, etc. Instead, I would like to take a closer look at two of their major policy initiatives. Emphasis added to all quotes.

The following summarizes the party’s key positions on immigration:

To safeguard our identity and culture, and to maintain the very existence of our nation, we will immediately put an indefinite moratorium on all immigration. Recognizing our people’s right to safety, and respecting the sanctity of the rule of law, we will immediately deport all criminal and illegal aliens. We believe, too, that American citizenship should be exclusive and meaningful. As such, the American Third Position will end the practice of automatic birthright-citizenship for children of illegal aliens. To restore, with civility, the identity and culture of our homeland, we will provide incentives for recent, legal immigrants to return to their respective lands.

This is good – stopping the influx, deportation of illegals, and an end to the concept of “anything goes” birthright citizenship. Even more impressively, the possibility of repatriation of “recent, legal immigrants” is brought up – the only instance of an American political party raising the “R” issue. I would like even more – a more comprehensive repatriation program for example, but this is a good start. Also:

Immigration affects our culture. It affects the way we feel, act, and operate within a community. It affects whether or not we can have actual communities at all. It affects our welfare and livelihood in ways that are immeasurable, aside from the efforts we go to in protecting against it. Immigration erodes our culture and sense of identity. In cities where many cultures meet, there is an atmosphere of hostility. Neighborhoods become atomized, and a true community is never established.

True and good, but it’s not only culture. Not surprisingly, I would like to have seen a more explicitly Salterian mention of the actual physical, demographic, biological effects of immigration. They add:

While we accept that ethnic minorities are, and will always be, part of America, we want our will to be observed and exercised as it should be, and as it should have been. We have a right to sovereignty and to exercise our will as a people. We want an America that is recognizable to us, one that we can feel comfortable in. We believe that this desire is not unique to our nation or our own people, and we believe that all people’s have a right to sovereignty. Accordingly, we will stop all immigration into America, except in special cases. To help restore our national identity, we will offer generous grants to recent immigrants who have a desire to return to their countries of origin. While this can be easily repositioned by a media who is hostile to our people or to a political establishment who relies on recent immigrants for votes, we only mean to create a system of mutual benefit, where the wills of both parties are observed and respected, as they should be. Wherever a recent immigrant has a need to get back home but is without the resources to do as much, we will lend a helping hand.

I don’t know about the first set of phrases, but I understand that this party needs to navigate within the streams of the politically possible – for now – and that a too radical program at first may be difficult. A contrasting argument would be that it’s a mistake to start off too moderate. An initial moderate stance may “lock in” this moderation and prevent future shifts toward more radical positions since, having attracted a mass of more moderate supporters at the beginning, the party would be loathe to lose that support by shifting towards more radical solutions to the pressing problems of race, culture, and nation. Truth be told, I’m more supportive of the latter mindset – that it is better to lay your cards on the table at the beginning and build in depth with more revolutionary support. Of course, the assumption here is that the A3P leadership and I actually agree on these more radical ideals. It may be that our vision is not congruent, and that the party program is what it is because that’s what the party leaders want it to be. And, of course, A3P leadership has the right to formulate their own party’s positions as they see fit. I merely make suggestions and offer some contrary views.

The A3P also has an excellent position on space exploration.

This is important; I am a very strong supporter of space exploration (both manned and unmanned). This is part of Western Man’s Faustian soul, will yield important information and discoveries, and, hopefully, eventually lead to Western Man’s expansion into, and colonization of, space (assuming of course we are not first Third Worldized out of existence). That the A3P has included space exploration as a key part of their program is therefore encouraging and demonstrates a willingness to look at long-term objectives, and also the ability to look beyond the standard “right-wing fare” (immigration, economy, crime, etc.).

One point though is that they should go beyond space exploration and put together a broader position on overall science and Technology. In other words they should also: encourage the development of alternative and novel sources of energy, promote advances in biomedical research (which should include not only basic research and that aimed at disease therapeutics, but also research on race and eugenics), stimulate development of advanced computing, and encourage continued and expanded research into the fabric of the universe and of reality itself (e.g., astronomy and, especially, both theoretical and applied advanced physics, cosmology, etc). Further, Americans need to be in the lead of what can be called “global disaster abatement” – research aimed at investigating and, if possible, preventing asteroid strikes, super volcano eruptions, pandemics, environmental degradation, etc. While some of the latter may seem like “science fiction,” that is more a function of our limited knowledge and imagination than it is to any real limitation of the possibilities.

The A3P can also state an interest in Western cultural artifacts – an interest in opposing the current “Winter” of our High Culture, and its sewer-like degraded atmosphere, with a contrasting encouragement of Western cultural rebirth and the creation of a civilization that can make us, our ancestors, and our posterity proud.

In summary, there is some more work to be done and I hope that a bit of constructive criticism will be appreciated. However, all in all, A3P seems at this point to be a very positive development, and I wish them well.

A major concern is that the landscape of “movement” history is littered with the scattered remnants of past projects that, initially, looked promising and generated enthusiasm, but quickly petered out due to lack of progress and direction, infighting, the action of infiltrators and agent provocateurs, diminished interest of activists with short attention spans, and the ability of the establishment to use a variety of methods to thwart nationalist progress. We can hope that things will be different this time.

The Occidental Observer Blog, January 20, 2010

Strange Fruit: Why Both Sides are Wrong in the Race Debate

However, there are really two types of human interests. With respect to the present discussion, these can be defined as follows. As the name suggests, preference interests describe a concern for objects or activities that a person or group has a conscious preference for; e.g., “my friend Joe has an interest in baseball.” This is the type of interest most people are familiar with, and Malik exploits this familiarity by framing his “argument” in these terms. However, such a narrow definition of “interest” as our “wants, needs, and desires” leads us to conclude that non-sentient organisms have no interests and that, for example, a recent heart attack victim can have an interest in smoking, eating deep fried Twinkies, and drinking melted lard – if he so “wants” and “desires.”

Therefore, we must consider welfare interests – which describes those objects and activities that contribute to the well being (defined in very broad terms, including the evolutionary) of any organism, independent of their “wants or desires” (if they are even capable of having “wants and desires”). Therefore, although a bacterium does not have preference interests, it does indeed have welfare interests in its survival and reproduction – reproduction contributing to genetic continuity, which is the core measure of “success” or “fitness” from an evolutionary perspective. And it should also be noted that Salter refers to the interests of evolved organisms (individual organisms and groups thereof), not the “interests” of genes per se. If Malik or anyone else wants to critique the “genes have interests” paradigm, I refer them to Richard Dawkins.

One of the defining characteristics of life on Earth is reproduction; indeed, as stated above, genetic continuity is so fundamental to evolutionary theory that biological “fitness” itself is defined in terms of reproductive success and genetic representation in future generations. It is therefore a quite unusual definition of “interests” that excludes as a fundamental concern the central tendency of all evolved organisms. It is more reasonable to see genetic continuity as one of – if not the – most important aspect of welfare interests for all life on Earth. After all, “welfare” presupposes existence; a group that does not exist cannot have “welfare” for any of its non-existent members to have an interest in. Thus, in a real sense, life does have a welfare interest in genetic continuity. All life on Earth reproduces using genetic material; therefore, genetic continuity of life equals the existence of life itself.

It is clear that evolved organisms have interests – welfare interests – in genetic continuity. The idea of kin selection recognizes that it doesn’t matter from an objective standpoint whether the genetic information to be continued is yours or identical, or relatively more similar, information in “kin.” “Kin” is a relative term, so that co-ethnics who share more of your genetic information in a relative sense compared to non-ethnics are also “kin” from the standpoint of genetic continuity. It therefore stands to reason that if genetic continuity constitutes a welfare interest for evolved organisms, and if the continuity of “kin” (including co-ethnics) is part of this continuity, then organisms have a welfare interest in the genetic continuity of their “kin,” relative to others. The word “relative” must be stressed. One does not say that an organism has a greater interest in a random “kin” member compared to self, but it does have an interest in “kin” compared to others of the same (or different) species who are genetically more dissimilar. And, the greater the numbers of co-ethnic kin vs. non-ethnics involved, the greater the welfare interests in the (genetic) continuity of kin over non-kin.

If we accept welfare interests as legitimately encompassing genetic continuity – and, after all, for life on Earth, genetic continuity is continuity itself, and existence must be an interest, is it not? – then the next line of “argument” against Salter involves the “naturalistic fallacy” (see note). In other words, the accusation is that Salter derives a preference interest for genetic continuity directly from welfare interests in that continuity, and one cannot directly derive an “ought” from an “is.” In other words, one cannot directly derive preferred human action from natural laws and biological facts.

However, Salter repeatedly makes clear that he does not do this – he intersperses “values” in between nature and human action. After all, why can’t humans “want” and “need” and “desire” genetic continuity? Why can’t they “want” and “need” and “desire” ethnic/racial continuity? Why is this an invalid value? Why can’t people value biological fitness? We are not saying they are obligated to do so from the reality of biological fitness; however, we are saying that if people choose to behave adaptively, then valuing genetic continuity is the way to achieve that objective.

Therefore:

Preference Interests in Genetic Continuity = Welfare Interests in Genetic Continuity + Values Favoring Fitness

If Malik believes that the values favoring fitness are morally or aesthetically or rationally wrong (at least for whites) then he needs to explicitly say so. He should go on the BBC and tell native Britons that a concern for their own continuity is bad and stupid – in the context of honestly and completely explaining evolutionary theory and biological fitness. He needs to openly express the opinion that native Britons should be unconcerned with their own survival as a (biological) group and that they should be unconcerned with displacement by others. It is clear that any group that takes Malik’s advice and eschews genetic continuity as a value will be replaced by groups that do hold such a value as a fundamental interest. Indeed, a lack of interest in group continuity is not evolutionarily stable – any groups that lack such an interest will replaced by those groups that value that interest, and if all groups lack this interest then the entire species may become extinct.

In addition, issues of preference interests and welfare interests begin to overlap – to declare that people have children only because of “desires and wants” for parenthood misses the point that most prospective parents want their own biological children, sometimes going to extreme lengths to achieve that objective. Isn’t then the preference interest for parenthood – manifested as a “need” and “desire” for one’s own children – an evolved instinct for personal genetic continuity? Can one continue to insist that genetic continuity is not an interest when so much of the “striving” of life is toward that goal?

Further, the idea that ethnocentrism is no longer adaptive today, although it may have been in the past, is ludicrous, since ethnocentrism is most adaptive in the context of ethnic/racial competition – a competition most salient in today’s globalist world, and in multiracial “western” nations. Indeed, ethnocentrism is likely more adaptive (at least for Westerners) today than in any other time in human history. The stakes have never been higher.

While genetic interests, like all ideas, should certainly be subjected to rational critique, the absurd assertion that human groups have no interest in their own continuity – which goes against evolutionary theory – is way beyond the limits of rationality. Why would Malik promote such an idea? Perhaps the first sentence of this abstract holds a clue (emphasis added):

The term Darwinian fitness refers to the capacity of a variant type to invade and displace the resident population in competition for available resources.

Indeed.  Given that Salterism can be viewed as a tool that the “resident population” can use to resist displacement by an invading “variant type,” is it surprising that a representative of a quite variant type wishes to delegitimize that tool so as to facilitate the invasion? Isn’t it in the genetic interests of the variant to deny the very existence of those same genetic interests when addressing the resident population, to disarm that population in the competition for “available resources” (e.g., territory)?

Note:

I in fact have become skeptical of this, and a number of other, commonly cited “fallacies.”  It is too easy for people to dismiss unwelcome ideas by stating that the promoter of those ideas has “committed the XYZ fallacy,” thus ending debate on the topic. It may be useful to, at some point in the future, revisit the idea of whether the “naturalistic” and/or “is/ought” fallacy is indeed a fallacy in the light of modern evolutionary theory.

An important new paper (free online; see here) has come out on Jewish population genetics.

The populations used in this study are described as:

The Middle Eastern populations included in the study were Bedouin (46), Druze (42), Mozabite (29), and Palestinian (46). The European populations were Adygei (17), Basque (24), French (28), Italian (13), Orcadian (15), Russian (25), Sardinian (28), and Tuscan (8). Middle Eastern and European non-Jewish individuals were taken from the H952 subset of the HGDP-CEPH panel [24]. The Jewish samples included Ashkenazi Jews (20), Moroccan Jews (20), Tunisian Jews (20), and Turkish Jews (20).

The major findings are described below, emphasis added:

Abstract: Background: Genetic studies have often produced conflicting results on the question of whether distant Jewish populations in different geographic locations share greater genetic similarity to each other or instead, to nearby non-Jewish populations. We perform a genome-wide population-genetic study of Jewish populations, analyzing 678 autosomal microsatellite loci in 78 individuals from four Jewish groups together with similar data on 321 individuals from 12 non-Jewish Middle Eastern and European populations.

Results: We find that the Jewish populations show a high level of genetic similarity to each other, clustering together in several types of analysis of population structure. Further, [statistical analyses] place the Jewish populations as intermediate between the non-Jewish Middle Eastern and European populations. Conclusion: These results support the view that the Jewish populations largely share a common Middle Eastern ancestry and that over their history they have undergone varying degrees of admixture with non-Jewish populations of European descent.

Neighbor-joining population trees obtained for the three distance matrices were generally quite similar (Figure 3). All three trees are divided into a European side and a Middle Eastern side, with the four Jewish populations located in the interior.

This result . . . assigns the Jewish populations and the Palestinians to the same cluster (Figure 2), and by the relatively close placement of the Palestinians and the Jewish populations in MDS plots of individual distances (Figure 5).

What about the Khazars?

One frequently discussed conversion that likely occurred in the 8th century at the far eastern edge of Europe, north of the Caucasus and Black Sea regions, is that of the Khazarian kingdom [60, 62, 64]. The demographic effect of this conversion is debated, so that only a small minority of the Khazars may have adopted Judaism. While the ultimate fate of the Khazar population remains unknown, the theory has been advanced that a large fraction of the ancestry of eastern European Jews derives from the Khazars [60, 62-64]. This theory would predict ancestry for the eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish population to be distinct from that of the other Jewish populations in the study. Although we did not observe such a distinct ancestry, it is noteworthy that in some analyses (Figures 2 and 3), as was observed in the recent study of Need et al. [10], we did detect similarity of the Adygei, a north Caucasian group from the area once occupied by the Khazars, to the Jewish populations.

This is consistent with what I’ve said in the past. The data are consistent with a “weak Khazar hypothesis” — that Ashkenazi Jews may have some fraction of Khazar ancestry but are more closely linked to other Middle Eastern groups. On the other hand, the “strong Khazar hypothesis” — that the Ashkenazim are merely “converted Khazars without any connection whatsoever to the Middle Eastern populations of the classical world (i.e., Hebrews)” — is highly unlikely. Not only are the Ashkenazim genetically close to the Sephardim (who have traditionally been considered as likely Hebrew descendants), but this study yet again confirms previous findings of a significant fraction of historical Middle Eastern ancestry in the Ashkenazim.

Therefore, the idea that the Ashkenazim are simply Khazars with no Middle Eastern ancestry is untenable.

However, equally untenable is the idea that the Ashkenazim are “just like Europeans” and are not distinct from the European genepool. It is quite clear that Europeans are different from Middle Easterners, with various Jewish groups positioned intermediate to those two major Caucasian continental population groups. Indeed, it may be reasonable to see Jews as a “mini-race” as they are distinct from both Europeans and Middle Easterners and are indeed more similar to each other than to these other groups. This conclusion is supported by the work of Need et al. (Note 1), which demonstrated that 1/4 Jewish ancestry can be detected in individuals. This ability to detect 1/4 Jewish ancestry, in a reasonably reliable manner, within the broader Caucasian family suggests a degree of racial differentiation of Jews sufficient for consideration as a separate (sub-) racial group.

In general, these findings support Jewish history and tradition, given the commonalities of the Ashkenazim and Sephardim, as well as the Middle Eastern connection. One would think that persons of Jewish ancestry would be well pleased with these findings, which have a strong empirical basis. Indeed, persons who falsely claim that the Ashkenazim are “Europeans” are as anti-Semitic as those who continue, in the face of all contradictory evidence, to peddle the “strong Khazar hypothesis.”

Note that discussions of the Ashkenazim as a group do not necessarily cover all individuals of this group. Likely (and supported to some extent by this paper) individual Ashkenazim may be essentially genetically European, and others genetically Middle Eastern, even when most of their fellows are intermediate to those populations. Global similarity analyses, such as the quantitative measurement offered by 23andme (using over 500,000 autosomal SNP markers), may be useful to determine the genetic affinities of individual Ashkenazim (and Sephardim); particular individuals may be quite different from their ethnic genetic centroid.

That being said, this paper’s data are fairly clear that the Ashkenazi (and Sephardic) genepool, as a whole, is not European, and it is not Middle Eastern either. It is a unique and distinct blending of these ancestries. This analysis is in no way a commentary on the debates found elsewhere on the Internet about “are the Jews white?” Different people draw the line of “whiteness” at different places within the Caucasian family of peoples. The issue here is, instead, empirical determination of the place of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews in the genetic spectrum of human populations. This paper is an important contribution to our understanding of this complex and fascinating topic.

This paper also refutes some self-serving stupidity that a part-Jewish and highly confused commentator has been making, in that he incorrectly asserts that the major biological/genetic split of Caucasians is within Europe, with northern Europeans (who he bizarrely believes underwent racial differentiation in India [!] of all places) separate from the other Europeans, who he thinks are in the Middle Eastern population branch. Of course, autosomal analyses consistently show this is incorrect, and I’ve previously cited those papers in other forums. From the present paper (emphasis added):

Neighbor-joining population trees obtained for the three distance matrices were generally quite similar (Figure 3). All three trees are divided into a European side and a Middle Eastern side, with the four Jewish populations located in the interior. This division is supported by relatively strong bootstrap values. . . . [T]he basic pattern visible in all three trees, in which the Middle Eastern and European populations cluster separately with the Jewish populations in the center.

European populations included are examples of Basque, French, Italian, Orcadian, Russian, Sardinian, and Tuscan. Basque, Italian, Sardinian, and Tuscan are southern European. Orcadian is northern European, the French can reasonably be seen as “central,” and Russians are eastern European. Given that European genetics is clinal as well as clustered, the arrangement of the populations in the “trees” is what one would expect.

Note:

1. The Need et al. paper also clearly shows a variety of European populations (similar to those analyzed in the paper discussed here) clustering separately from Middle Easterners, with Jews in an intermediate position. Thus, different research groups, using different marker sets, are coming to the same conclusion – a conclusion supported by other peer-reviewed papers as well.

Reading Occidental Dissent, I came across a comment by a so-called “White Advocate” making the following common “argument”:

Aside from that, sorry, but if Spaniards, Maltese, Italians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Albanians, Greeks, Georgians and Armenians are considered White, then there is no damn reason why Ashkenazi Jews, or people of European descent with some Ashkenazi blood as well, are not White as well. Nobody can make a RATIONAL and FACTBASED argument why this is not the case.

I will provide some rational and fact-based arguments why it is indeed not the case. The genetic data are fact-based and the ethnic formation/indigenous argument is, in my opinion, rational. The cultural arguments incorporate some degree of subjectivity, but that subjectivity is derived from knowledgeable commentators, both Jewish and non-Jewish, and, most likely, is consistent with objective truth.

First, if by ‘White’ is meant ‘(native) indigenous European,’ many people do not consider Georgians and Armenians in this category. Georgia and Armenia are lands that are biologically and culturally on the border between Occident and Orient, and examples of both Western and Eastern types can be found within these populations. Albanians are (likely) genetically European, but as Islam is culturally outside of the West, those Albanians who practice that faith may be seen by many Westerners as being “them” rather than “us.” The other groups mentioned by “White Advocate” are Europeans of a Western and historically Christian background. It may serve his purposes to cite a constellation of varied and highly distinct Caucasian ethnic groups — some European and some not — to divert attention from the specific question at hand: how should the Ashkenazim be racially and culturally identified?. . . Read the whole article.

Avant-Garde Fascism: The Mobilization of Myth, Art, and Culture in France, 1909–1939

Mark Antliff, a professor of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke University, has put together a useful analysis of the cultural-aesthetic memes utilized by French fascists of 1909-1939 to promote their visions of national renewal. Antliff’s analysis focuses on the connection between fascist ideologies and the European avant-garde, which most people would more likely associate with the anti-national left. Antliff is fairly even handed in the book, with the occasional use of scare quotes to express his skepticism/disdain for certain “fascist ideas.”

In contrast, I believe his use of the term “democracy” should always have scare quotes, as “democratic” systems deceive the populace into believing that someone other than self-interested elites are running the show; however, apparently, Antliff and I disagree on our political preferences. Antliff also concludes the book with a line about how the ideas of the French fascists were not able to stem the tide of the “bloodshed” caused by the military aggressions of Hitler and Mussolini (including the invasion of France). Very well. One hopes an academic will write about the real blood that has been shed imposing “equality” on “the people” – either that of the mass-murdering Marxists or the genocidal globalist multiculturalists and their plans for a multiracial West. So much for my complaints about the book. What about fascism and avant-garde aesthetics?

Roger Griffin, in his Fascism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), famously described fascism as “palingenetic populist ultra-nationalism” – making the elements of renewal, rebirth, and regeneration central to all permutations of this ideology. It is also important to differentiate between real fascism and “para-fascist” ersatz fascism. Para-fascism is often confused with real fascism in the public mind, which gives the false impression that fascism is ossified reactionary conservatism, rather than a revolutionary movement interested in avant-garde themes and ideas.

The differences between real revolutionary fascism and para-fascism are easily summarized: Para-fascist regimes are authoritarian, traditionalist, reactionary regimes, often military dictatorships, that fossilize a status quo favoring traditional elites of business, nobility, religion, and the military. Such regimes want nothing to do with the revolutionary and palingenetic aspects of true fascism; the idea that the secular religious, Futuristic, and avant-garde characteristics of, say, (early) Italian Fascism has anything to do with Franco’s Spain or Pinochet’s Chile is absurd.

Indeed, as Griffin makes clear, fascists and para-fascists are usually, by their very nature, bitter enemies. While para-fascists may co-opt some superficial characteristics of their fascist opponents, in power they tend to ruthlessly suppress the expression of revolutionary fascism. When para-fascism attempts to co-opt fascism by sharing power – as Antonescu attempted in Romania with the Legionaries — conflict is inevitable, since the objectives of the two parties are completely different: para-fascist ossification vs. fascist palingenetic regeneration. Thus, in Romania, civil war between para-fascists and fascists led to the victory of the para-fascists, and the exile of the fascist forces. The idea that Antonescu was “fascist” is a byproduct of either ideological ignorance or ideological mendacity, a Marxist desire to strip their fascist competitors of revolutionary dynamism and reduce them to mere “bourgeois hooligans.”

Not all fascisms were equally “fascist” and revolutionary, and even individual fascist movements have oscillated between revolutionary ideals and borderline reactionary para-fascism.

For example, Italian fascism went through three distinct phases. In the years before the seizure of power and in the first half-dozen years of Mussolini’s regime, Italian fascism was in its “purest” form – revolutionary and palingenetic – emphasizing the regeneration of the Italian people and the Italian nation-state. Avant-garde themes and theorists, particularly Futurism, were important in this period, and individuals such as Marinetti were influential in early day Italian fascism.

However, the forces of reaction and of compromise with the establishment were always present; the presence of the King and the Vatican were two impediments to the process of “fascistization” that Mussolini could not, or would not, deal with. In the end, the Concordat was a turning point and the regime’s second phase veered to the “right” in the 1930s, becoming more conservative and reactionary, replacing internal regeneration with external imperialism. Without WW II, chances were good that Italian fascism would have degenerated into a stagnant para-fascist regime similar to that of Franco’s Spain.

Military defeat and the overthrow of Il Duce stopped that process; in the last and third phase of Italian fascism, the “Salo Republic,” the ideology shifted to the left, embracing a militant socialism, and becoming overtly pan-European in scope.

What about the Hitler and the Nazis? There has been some debate as to whether German National Socialism was a form of fascism. It seems to me obvious that it was; that differences existed between the Italian and German forms of fascism is not an argument against that conclusion. All genuine fascisms displayed important differences, yet still contained within themselves the core components of Griffin’s “palingenetic populist ultra-nationalism.”

In the case of National Socialism, the palingenesis was biological; Nazism was a heavily racialized and materialist form of fascism. The German National Socialists were tribalistic in worldview rather than Futurist, and, internal debates aside; Hitler himself was very hostile to the European avant-garde.

Thus, key differences between fascist forms are observed. The German brand had the biopolitical advantage of recognizing the importance of race. On the other hand, the Italian brand had the sociopolitical advantage of a more optimistic Futurist orientation, and was more open-minded with respect to tapping into the cultural energies created by the avant-garde artistic and sociopolitical movements extant in the first decades of the twentieth century.

In some sense, perhaps the “purest” brand of fascism was that of Codreanu and his “Legion of the Archangel Michael,” also known as the Iron Guard. This intensely palingenetic movement emphasized spiritual and moral regeneration to create a Romanian “New Man” to lead the nation to a higher level and fulfill the destiny of the Romanian people. This highly “virulent” form of “palingenetic populist ultra-nationalism” proved itself unable to co-exist with Antonescu’s conservative authoritarian para-fascism; the Legionary movement’s attempt to seize full power for itself (rather than share it with para-fascists; this sharing was correctly seen by the Legionaries as being an emasculating compromise of their ideology) was crushed by the para-fascist military apparatus.

Three fascisms, three different movements. But the revolutionary energies unleashed by these ideologies stand in sharp contrast to the moribund and ossified conservatism of the para-fascists. The political/cultural avant-garde (Italian), the biological-racialist (German), and the spiritual/moral (Romanian) components of these fascisms are important to us today.

And it is probably wrong to separate out the avant-garde mindset as being only applicable to the political/cultural sphere. After all, we really do need new, cutting-edge memes with respect to both materialist race and non-materialist morality. To quote a certain pro-fascist poet: “Make it new!”

With respect to Antliff’s book itself, chapter topics include Sorelian myth and anti-Semitism, and the fascistic politics of Valois, Lamour, and Maulnier. The importance of Sorelian myth was underscored by a recent Michael O’Meara piece that appeared on TOQ Online. Antliff stresses that culture and aesthetics were extremely important to Sorel in his quest to formulate a doctrine of instrumentally utilizing myth to overturn the hated rationalist-capitalist-democratic system. Art is part of this aesthetic emphasis and, truth be told, Sorel focused on culture over politics; indeed, he was scornful of the power of the myth being used and squandered for low-level political aims.

Further, Sorel went through a distinctly “anti-Semitic” phase, in which Jews were considered the exemplars of ultra-rationalist anti-creators, whose worldview set them in opposition to native peoples and native cultural expressions and aesthetics. Opposing the pro-Dreyfus “French” journal La revue blanche, Sorel sarcastically referred to the journal’s Jewish founders as “two Jews come from Poland in order to regenerate our poor country, so unhappily still contaminated by the Christian civilization of the seventeenth century.” Sorel accused Jewish intellectuals of wanting to promote an abstract (i.e., non-ethnic, non-national, non-cultural) concept of (French) citizenship and to also promote “cosmopolitan anarchy.”

Related to this “anti-Semitism,” Sorel admired and promoted the Classical World; the values of classical heroes, such as the Greeks at Thermopylae, were something counterpoised against the Jewish ethic and the degeneration of parliamentary democracy.

Sorel considered art as related to the creativity of work, a creativity that he wished to inculcate into the “productive workers” in place of assembly line mass capitalism and rationalized “one man-one vote” democracy. He also considered an enlightened “proletariat” as being able to reinvigorate a stagnant bourgeoisie through class conflict.

Georges Valois, 1878–1945

Georges Valois (born Alfred-Georges Gressent) went through a wide variety of ideological contortions in his lifetime, from fascism to “libertarian communism,” ending up dying in a Nazi concentration camp after being captured as a member of the “French Resistance.” While such an unbalanced individual represents much of what is wrong with the “movement” (changing your mind is one thing – completely switching your worldview from one moment to the next is another), some of his activities during his “fascist stage” are of interest.

Particularly enlightening is the focus on the urbanism of Le Corbusier, which stands in contrast to much of the American “movement” and its anti-urbanist emphasis on militant ruralism. No doubt, in the West today, the city is an anti-white, anti-Western disaster, full of racial enemies. No doubt as well that throughout much of human history, the city was an unhealthy and sterilizing place, inimical to racial survival and racial progress.

However, in our modern technological age, if we can solve our racial problems, the city itself does not necessarily have to be a racial evil. As part of a natural continuum of human ecologies – isolated rural, rural, suburban/town, small city, larger cities, etc. – the city may play an important role in the Futurist racial ethnostate of tomorrow, a place of technological advancement, racially healthy avant-garde memes, and sociopolitical dynamism. Racial nationalism can and should be reconciled to a certain degree of urbanism – not the urbanism of degeneration, but that of regeneration.

This of course underlies a schism within activism that often goes unnoticed – between modernist, technological tribalist-racialist Futurism and a ruralist anti-technological ecotribalism. It is clear that the French fascists described by Antliff for the most part fall into the first group. Thus, a major divide exists between the Futurist-Modernist fascists (think Marinetti in Italy) and the ruralist soil-oriented romantic past-oriented fascists (think Darre in Germany, or the agrarian-nostalgic Vichy regime in France).

Of course, a healthy society needs both worldviews, and in practical terms a balance is required. For example, Valois incorporated a “love for the native soil” along with his Futurist mindset. Indeed, Valois contrasted “Asiatic nomadness” associated with communism with the “Latin sedentary” style — derived from “cultured Roman legions” — of the French, tied to the native soil and inclined to fascism. He also associated the hated nomadic lifestyle with capitalism, since hyper-rational capitalism uprooted the workers from grounding in an organic society and turned them into atomized, rootless “nomads.”

A related issue is the relationship between Futurism and the veneration of the past. Antliff makes clear that the emphasis on the past in fascism (e.g., the Greco-Roman classical world) was not meant to mean turning back the clock and shunning progress. Instead, this look to the past was, paradoxically, futurist, in that the fascists wanted to take from the past certain noble values and behaviors and use these to help build the modern, technological world of tomorrow. Therefore, one need not discard the past to build a new future, but judiciously use elements of the past as necessary building blocks for the projected futurist edifice. Different strands of fascist thought need not be incompatible, just as common ground must be found between the tribalist futurist and tribalist ruralist strands of modern racial nationalist thought.

Another French fascist, Philippe Lamour, also went through many ideological “twists and turns,” ultimately rejecting fascism in favor of anti-fascism and syndicalism. Lamour originally represented the fascist variant of “machine primitivism” – that is, an anti-rationalist “new consciousness attuned to the dynamism of technology.” Thus, urban industrialism, technology, productivity, and futurist modernism need not be associated with “rational” egalitarianism but with tribalistic fascism. Lamour wished to create a “community of producers” integrating the different classes of French society to overturn liberal democracy in favor of a modernist technologically dynamic fascist state.

Early French fascists such as Lamour also promoted the idea of a European federation, and attempted to make common cause with more pan-European and “leftist” German National Socialists, such as the Strasserian “Black Front,” who favored European cooperation as opposed to Hitler’s hegemony through military conquest. Not coincidentally, before he fell into Hitler’s orbit, Mussolini also favored an alliance of European (fascist) states, promoted through the doctrine of “Roman Universality,” with practical expression through events such as the pan-fascist Montreux conference.

Lamour’s greatest contribution to French fascism was the promotion of the “conflict of generations,” pitting the younger fascistic generation of WW I against the older generation of parliamentary democrats. This latter group was seen as being out of touch with the new age of national regeneration, avant-garde culture and politics, Sorelian myth, as well as technological productivity. Lamour and his “war generation” were at the forefront of the battle of youth vs. the image of fossilized reactionary status quo politicians.

Aesthetically, the work of German artist Germaine Krull and even Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein influenced the avant-garde sensibilities of “machine primitive” young French fascists such as Lamour. Antliff summarizes Lamour’s unique contribution to the ideology of interwar French fascism as the melding of “machine aesthetics” to the concept of generational warfare. Thus, to Lamour, technological dynamism and the replacement of the ossified previous generation with fresh youth were the Sorelian myths required to spark an era of national renewal.

Thierry Maulnier, 1908–1988

Thierry Maulnier (born Jacques Talagrand), author of “Crisis Is in Man,” had as his concept of Sorelian myth “classical violence.” Within the journal Combat, Maulnier and colleagues opposed the leftist French Popular Front’s Marxist-themed “culture” with their own view of aesthetics in architecture and sculpture. Antliff describes Combat’s as focusing on “three interrelated spheres: political institutions, human spirituality, and aesthetics.” The classicism of the Maulnier school promoted the idea of a “synthesis of Dionysian energy and Apollonian restraint.”

Politically, Maulnier wished for a form of French fascism that rejected parliamentary democracy but which still supported the rights and aspirations of the individual, as opposed to what was perceived as the more authoritarian and collectivist societies of Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany. These distinctions between French and other fascisms became more salient after Mussolini fell into Hitler’s orbit and became hostile to French national interests. Indeed, before the start of WW II, Maulnier advocated a “minimal fascist program” for France that would be both a short-term “fix” to bolster the French military for confrontation with the Axis, as well as preparation for the long-term and permanent fascistic remodeling of society after the Axis threat had dissipated.

It must be noted that the Valois, Lamour, and Maulnier fascist ideologies, while linked together by a palingenetic call for national renewal and a rejection of parliamentary democracy, did differ in important ways. In particular, the classicism of Maulnier can be contrasted with the militant futurism and “machine primitivism” of Lamour. Although Antliff stresses that the French fascist focus on the classical world does not necessarily imply a rejection of modernism per se, the specific differences between Maulnier and Lamour were the greatest of any of the individuals profiled by Antliff. Valois and Lamour both embraced the image of “industrial production” as a central motif of their ideology; however, while Lamour spun together a myth of generational conflict, Valois instead emphasized a “spirit of victory” in which the heroism of WW I will now be turned to a battle of the entire nation to create an organized fascist-industrial society. Of these three men, it was Lamour who was the most steadfastly “avant-garde” in cultural-aesthetic orientation, Maulnier the least.

Crude ethnic stereotyping may lead one to conclude that an emphasis on art, culture, and aesthetics in the creation of fascist ideology was (and is) a particularly “French” phenomenon. Of course, other fascist movements were concerned with these issues, sometimes to a significant extent, but none of them incorporated such memes into the core of the political thinking as did French fascist thinkers. Indeed, the cultural-aesthetic emphasis of the French strain of fascism is a breath of fresh air after immersion in the more focused political thought of the Italian Fascists and the racialist ideals of the German National Socialists.

In fact, all three areas of focus – cultural-aesthetic, political, and racialist – are required for a complete memetic complex to promote fascistic ideals. As a biological reductionist, I would emphasize the racialist first of all, but doing so with respect to modern genetic science rather than the sort of quackery that passed as “racial science” under the Nazis. However, biological racialism by itself is not enough. Without an edifice of political and cultural-aesthetic memes, the foundation of ultimate interests will go nowhere.

Related to this issue of political aesthetics, I was impressed by Alex Kurtagic’s analysis of “semiotic systems” and the importance of style in shaping perceptions of status within nationalist memes. This is important. Of course, the enemy will, as a matter of course, attempt to oppose this approach through co-option and/or mockery.

Co-option is a problem for any memetic threat to establishment power; for example, the GOP has effectively co-opted “rightist, racist” concerns through the exploitation of “implicit whiteness.” This strategy has enabled the Republicans to retain white support while at the same time moving continuously leftward in the direction of overtly anti-white policies.

Thus, while aesthetics and style are important, they always must be innately linked to content to prevent the establishment from utilizing the same semiotic systems to promote the exact opposite of our objectives. Dealing with co-option will be difficult, and it is crucially important that the problem be analyzed from the beginning in a proactive fashion.

In other words, right from the start, the construction of unique avant-garde racial-nationalist semiotic systems must incorporate strategies for preventing co-option and dealing with co-option if these preventive measures fail. Therefore, we must identify, in advance, as many problems with each approach as possible, and develop multiple contingency plans for dealing with each emergent counter-move of the establishment.

Mockery is also a problem; the establishment, utilizing its control of the mass media and its stable of celebrity puppets, can subject any racial-nationalist semiotic system to a barrage of withering ridicule. It is important that the elitist and superior nature of the system be of sufficient strength that adherents can turn around such ridicule and assert it as a matter of pride and not shame. In other words, the establishment ridicule itself must be mocked as the pathetic attempts of a dying and out-of-touch system to delegitimize a novel movement of which they are afraid.

Again, careful planning is required to plan against the establishment’s ridicule strategy, but if both co-option and mockery can be successfully dealt with, the semiotic-aesthetic strategy has a chance to achieve its objectives. And those objectives are, in essence, to defuse the “social pricing” attacks of the establishment against racial-nationalist activists and adherents, by providing an alternative value system opposed to, and independent of, establishment standards and acceptance.

In summary, Antliff has dissected a particularly interesting and heretofore unexplored strain of French fascism characterized by an embrace of avant-garde cultural concepts, modernism, Futurism, productivity and the planned society, urbanism and industrial technology, exemplified by so-called “machine primitivism.”

With today’s worries of “peak oil,” and concerns that the multiracial West will collapse, visions of decentralized ruralistic tribalism have again become prominent in nationalist thought. However, the white man is endlessly inventive, and free of the shackles of genocidal globalist multiculturalism, the technological genius of whites, so unleashed, may provide the foundation for a Futurist, technologically advanced and tribalist society. Such a society would have options for both the urbanist technological and ruralist agrarian lifestyles for those whose preferences are for one or the other.

Although I am sure he is an “anti-fascist,” Antliff’s work helps us to consider one technological Futurist option. The major conclusion from both Antliff’s and Kurtagic’s analyses is that staid and conformist methods for sociopolitical activism may be best replaced, at least in part, by avant-garde memes that let some “fresh air” into stale “movement” environs.

Cola di Rienzi, c. 1313 - 1354

Ronald F. Musto
Apocalypse in Rome: Cola di Rienzo and the Politics of the New Age
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003

A young Italian nationalist leads his followers on a march through Rome, seizing power from corrupt elites to establish a palingenetic regime. Declaring himself Tribune, his ultimate aim is to recreate the power and glory of Ancient Rome. However, a conspiracy of his enemies topples him from power, and he is imprisoned.  Eventually, the most powerful man in the West frees him and restores him to power — albeit as leader of a puppet regime. His second attempt at Italian rebirth is cut short; he is captured, killed, and his body desecrated by the howling mob. A man who had attempted to drive his degenerate countrymen to fulfill a higher destiny is cut down by the unthinking masses — a cowardly herd who lacked the ability to comprehend, much less work towards, this leader’s dreams of glory.

Is this the life of Benito Mussolini, Duce of Fascist Italy? Well, perhaps — but even more accurately it is a description of Il Duce’s predecessor, the Roman notary Cola di Rienzi. In the mid-fourteenth century, 900 years after the Fall of Rome, di Rienzi engaged in a romantic and ill-fated attempt to restore the Roman Republic and, perhaps, the Empire itself.  Musto’s book tells us what happened. To those familiar with the life of Mussolini, di Rienzi’s tale is shocking in its similarities — shocking and depressing.

The life of Cola di Rienzi — referred to by Musto as Cola di Rienzo — is well known to historians of the Middle Ages, and was, at one time, well known to Italians in general. But in the twentieth century he was eclipsed by Mussolini, who still symbolizes Roman and Italian renewal in many minds. The self-hating Italian Luigi Barzini did di Rienzi no favors in his book The Italians. Thus, Musto’s sympathetic and well-written biography of di Rienzi is long overdo, and is an excellent addition to the library of any individual interested in European history. Of interest for this essay is the relationship of di Rienzi to fascism and the role played by the church and selfish elites in the downfall of di Rienzi and in the humiliating history of modern Italy.

Roger Griffin (Fascism, Oxford University Press, 1995) famously described fascism as “palingenetic populist ultra-nationalism” — making the elements of renewal, rebirth, and regeneration central to all permutations of this ideology. That Cola di Rienzi was a proto-fascist is quite clear. He was a populist leader, appealing to the middle class against established elites, intent on the regeneration and rebirth of Rome, Italy, and, by example, the world.

William Holman Hunt, Rienzi vowing to obtain justice for the death of his young brother, slain in a skirmish between the Colonna and the Orsini factions, 1848 - 1849

That he couched this agenda in highly religious Christian terms is to be expected for the time and place — in fourteenth century Italy he could not do otherwise — and in no way detracts from the fascistic palingenetic tone of his rhetoric and actions. After all, perhaps the “most fascist” of all the twentieth-century fascisms — Romania’s Legionary movement — was devoutly Christian and made spiritual/moral regeneration the palingenetic focus of their ideology. Thus, there is no obvious reason not to see “Rienzism” as a sort of fourteenth century fascism.

Indeed, as Musto describes di Rienzi’s march through Rome (sound familiar?) to establish his buono stato (good state), we read the following : “. . . the people of Rome restored to their proper place, mingling among friends, neighbors, and strangers, all sharing the same sense of rebirth and renewal” (emphasis added). That sounds reasonably palingenetic to me; Cola di Rienzi as Tribune of Rome or Benito Mussolini as Duce of Italy — the similarities outweigh the differences.

That Cola di Rienzi is viewed by many as a generally positive figure who — for all his flaws — sincerely wanted the best for the people suggests that perhaps proto-fascism (or fascism, for that matter) is not the unalloyed evil that some make it out to be.

Musto states that di Rienzi was more of an artist than a politician in his actions and propaganda, which is completely consistent with the aesthetic nature of fascist movements (uniforms, ceremonies, rituals, art, etc.) of the twentieth century. Cola di Rienzi’s friend and admirer was the famed Petrarch, who recognized in the young Tribune the hope of Italy and the possibility of a new age, an age of rebirth and promise. Thus, a primary icon of fourteenth century Western culture was attracted to the sociopolitical and aesthetic characteristics of the Rienzian phenomenon.

Musto notes that di Rienzi spoke not only for the people of Rome but for all the people of “sacred Italy” to whom he wished to extend Roman citizenship. Musto describes in detail how, after spending time with Pope Clement VI — his eventual bitter enemy — di Rienzi returned to Rome to overthrow the feudal rule of the baronial families. These barons had turned the eternal city into a depopulated, anarchical, bloody, and violent mess, with the Roman people groaning under the self-interested misrule of the baronial elite.

Cola spent many months laying the groundwork for his revolution, engaging in various form of propaganda, including art as well as speech, until the day came when he and followers marched to seize power. Cola declared himself Tribune, ousted the barons, and began the formation of the so-called buono stato — a name which implies as much moral/spiritual renewal as much as it does plain good governance.

Statue of Cola di Rienzi by Girolamo Masini, erected in 1877 near the Campidoglio, where he was killed

And di Rienzi did bring good governance; to use twentieth-century language he made the “trains run on time.”  Establishing ties with other Italian cities, reaching out to the West as a whole, and supported by Petrarch, di Rienzi captured the attention not only of Europe but also instilled fear into the Islamic world, which saw the possibility of a resurgent Rome as the center of Western resistance to Asiatic expansion.

However, the Pope was not at all pleased with the rise of a secular power base in Rome to challenge the Church. As long as he perceived that di Rienzi would act as an effective mouthpiece to enforce Papal prerogatives against the barons, Clement supported the Tribune. But as soon as it became apparent that di Rienzi was his own man, with his own agenda, and that this agenda included a destiny for Rome and Italy that went beyond slavish subservience to the church, Clement decided that di Rienzi had to go.

Therefore, after months of intriguing against di Rienzi — even to the point of attempting to orchestrate food shortages to turn the Roman people against the Tribune — the Pope (the papacy at this time being self-exiled in France to protect themselves from their secular enemies) dropped the bombshell: on Dec. 3, 1347, Cola di Rienzi was condemned and excommunicated, and all who would support the Tribune were threatened with the same fate.

Indeed, if Rome still rallied behind di Rienzi, the entire city would have been under the Papal interdict; the entire city would have become a pariah in the Western, Christian world. In the fourteenth century, particularly fourteenth century Italy, excommunication was the worst sociopolitical fate for any leader, far worse than merely being labeled a “traitor” (which they called di Rienzi as well).

A whole list of crimes were put forth against the Tribune (including, absurdly, necromancy), and the Pope began to actively collaborate with the barons for the “final act” against the Rienzian regime. By this time, di Rienzi and the Roman people had decisively defeated the barons in the battle of Porta San Lorenzo. But it did not matter. In the year 1347, the Church, and the spiritual power of the Pope, was far more powerful than any army, any military victory. So, with the aid of the Pope, the barons rebelled and deposed di Rienzi, who was forced into exile.

Even then the Pope was not satisfied, remaining “fixated” on di Rienzi, scheming to have him captured and “annihilated.” Such was the hatred of this “Christian man of God” for the Tribune who wished to create regeneration for Romans and Italians. Could di Rienzi, in the fourteenth century, have said “Basta!” and defied the Church? Consider that Mussolini in the twentieth century could not do so, to his detriment. The secular power and ambitions of the Church was and remains a shackle on the aspirations of the Italian people.

The banishment of Rienzi, as depicted in Wagner's opera "Rienzi"

Cola di Rienzi attempted to find sanctuary in Prague with the emperor Charles IV who eventually bowed to the overwhelming power of the papacy and turned di Rienzi over to the Inquisition for trial for “heresy.” Part of di Rienzi’s defense was his assertion — somewhat “outrageous” for the fourteenth century — that the church should have no secular power, since the founding basis for Christianity was “poverty and humility.” One can only imagine Pope Clements’s reaction to that.

Eventually brought before Pope Clement, di Rienzi was a shell of his former self, and the symbolism of this meeting cannot be dismissed. The populist and secular (yet devoutly religious) hope of Italy was brought as a humiliated prisoner before the man representing the memetic virus that has infected the West and enslaved the Italian people for centuries.

The worm turned after the death of Clement VI and the ascension of Pope Innocent VI, a less “worldly and extravagant” man than his predecessor. Innocent had, not surprisingly, secular aspirations in Rome and was therefore distressed by the violence and anarchy prevailing after the fall of di Rienzi and the rise, once again, of the baronial families. Therefore, Cola was “rehabilitated” and sent to Rome as a Papal puppet to restore his “good state” — but this time, as Innocent writes, without the “fantastic innovations” of the first Rienzian regime.

Of course, those “fantastic innovations” were merely the assertion of the Roman peoples’ right to rule themselves in a secular state independent of papal micromanagement, and that Rome and Italy were in dire need of regeneration and renewal. This was not exactly what the church wanted, or wants today. And so, a chastened Cola di Rienzi was put forward as Pope Innocent’s tool with the hope that the repeat of the Rienzian regime would not degenerate into farce. Rome not being what she once was, that hope was misplaced.

The ex-tribune (now “senator” and Papal rector) was painfully aware that the real leader of Rome was the Pope, not the Emperor, not any self-proclaimed Tribune. This is something that he had dedicated years to opposing. From the beginning of his second tenure of power — power only at the sufferance of the Pope — the established elites, particularly the barons, opposed and plotted against di Rienzi. The plots became complicated and di Rienzi, after years of imprisonment and hardship, and possibly suffering from epilepsy, was not the same man. Errors of judgment, executions of venerable Roman citizens, and the imposition of required taxes began to fray the support of the fickle Roman masses.

When the end came, at the instigation of the barons and their supporters, it came fast. The howling mob stormed di Rienzi’s residence and drowned out his attempts to reason with them. Cola di Rienzi was caught trying to flee the mob in disguise (like Mussolini); he was stabbed to death (like Caesar); his body was desecrated (like Mussolini again) then burnt to ashes (like Hitler). The ashes were thrown into the Tiber; all physical traces of the Tribune were gone.

From a production of Wagner's "Rienzi" in Nancy, France, July 2003

The eerily similar lives and political careers of di Rienzi and Mussolini should give one pause. Both men were Italians living in a time of crisis for their people. Both men rose up to lead populist revolts against the established order. Both men established regimes which were initially successful and lauded by many, but then these regimes went sour and were overthrown by the forces of reaction. Both men were imprisoned thereafter. Both men then returned to power through the help of another, more powerful person — in the case of di Rienzi it was the Pope, in the case of Mussolini, Hitler. Both men then attempted to reestablish their regime, eventually failed, were killed by their enemies, and their bodies were desecrated by the mob. Both men attempted to lift the Italian people to greatness, but the special interests were too powerful and the lure of insipid, hedonistic stagnation too great.

The similarities are too many to be a coincidence. This then seems to be a distinctly Italian phenomenon. Who was at fault? Was it the fault of the two leaders themselves? Were they fatally flawed men? No doubt both men, particularly di Rienzi, had their flaws, and these flaws contributed to their failure and demise. But all great men have flaws. This easy explanation does not suffice.

No, the Italian people also have to share the blame, and I say this as a pan-European racial nationalist who is very supportive of the Italian people. Nevertheless, twice in Italy’s modern history dynamic leaders came to the fore to lead Italians to greatness, and twice did the Italian people turn on them. (In defense of the Italians, one has to ask if any other European societies have done better. One might say that it is better to have tried and failed a Rienzi or a Mussolini than never to have tried at all, which is the case of most European societies.)

I cannot forget reading Leon DeGrelle’s book on his experiences on the eastern front (translated as Campaign in Russia), fighting for Europe as part of the Wallonian division of the Waffen SS. The Italian soldiers he met were uninterested in fighting. They had no sense of the seriousness of the crusade against Bolshevism and for Europe. Instead, they cared only about “wine, women, and fun in the sun.” Nietzsche’s “last men” to be sure! (The rest of Europe has surely caught up with the Italians since then.) No wonder Italian military performance in WW II was a farce. No wonder that Italians have so long been the anvil of history, not the hammer, a fact lamented by great Italians from the middle ages to Machiavelli to Julius Evola to the present day.

Benito Mussolini, 1883 - 1945

But we cannot solely blame the Italians or focus on the personal flaws of di Rienzi and Mussolini. No, the 800 pound gorilla in the room is the Vatican.

An analysis of the career of di Rienzi clearly shows the pernicious influence of Pope Clement VI. Musto’s book makes it clear that Clement VI was little more than a self-interested feudal lord, more concerned with maintaining petty Papal power and privilege than in the national regeneration promised by di Rienzi. For example, on page 190 we read of the Pope’s real attitude toward di Rienzi’s new regime: “. . . the pope began carefully, delicately plotting Cola’s downfall and seeking his personal humiliation, as well as his public infamita as a traitor and a heretic.” In short, the church plotted to crush the political aspirations of the Italian people to keep them in secular servitude to the Vatican.

There is a long history of such behavior. Cola di Rienzi was not the first man to attempt Italian/Roman regeneration only to fall victim to the Vatican. As Musto tells us, in 1143, the people of Rome rose up against Pope Innocent II, drove the papacy into exile, re-established the Roman Senate, and even started minting coins in the name of “SPQR” — “The Senate and the People of Rome.” Arnold of Brescia, a monk and political philosopher, rose to lead the new republic and offered an intellectual rationale for the church’s renunciation of secular power. But in 1155, at the instigation of the papacy, the German Emperor Frederick I led an army against Rome to crush the republic and reinstall the pope. Arnold of Brescia was burned at the stake as a heretic and his ashes dumped into the Tiber. Yes, to preserve its power, the church turned to foreigners to suppress the political aspirations of the Romans.

The secular power of the church caused a “dual loyalty” problem that remains to this day. Is an Italian’s highest loyalty to Italy or to the Vatican? To di Rienzi and Mussolini or to the Pope? (Or, in Il Duce’s Italy, to the Pope as well as the secular figurehead, the King?) It is interested to contemplate how history might have been changed if the papacy had remained in Avignon, if the church had been disestablished and the papacy denied sovereign status once and for all after the reunification of Italy, or if Mussolini had not signed the Lateran Treaty of 1929, rescuing papal sovereignty from the legal limbo in which it had languished since 1861.

The other major party opposed to Cola di Rienzi were the barons of medieval Rome. As a self-interested elite, enriching themselves at the cost of the people’s well being, they are perfectly analogous to the white globalist elites of today, who routinely betray their race’s interests in their hedonistic pursuit of money, power, and pleasure.

The barons of di Rienzi’s time are also analogous to the established elites (King, nobility, military, and business) of Mussolini’s Italy. These elites opposed a full and radical fascistization of the Italian people and instead valued the well-being of their own caste over that of society as a whole. European-derived peoples, with their greater individualism, tend to produce elites willing to betray their race (and their own ethnic genetic interests) for selfish class/caste/individual interests.

April 28, 1945: The bodies of Benito Mussolini and his mistress Claretta Petacci hang upside-down in Milan's Piazza Loreto for the delight of the mob

What are the lessons of the story of Cola di Rienzi?

Culturally and politically, the Italians are one of the healthiest people in Europe today. Their tradition of palingenetic populist nationalism has deep roots, nourished and hallowed by the blood of martyrs like Arnold of Brescia, Cola di Rienzi, and Benito Mussolini. They failed because they could not overcome the resistance of the “barons” and the church — those whose petty secular interests are threatened by genuine national renewal. The next time — if there is a next time — things need to be done right.

For the West as a whole, the story of di Rienzi demonstrates that self-interested established elites always oppose palingenesis. It is time for a new elite, one that understands that their own interests and those of their people are one and the same, and who will work first towards  survival, and second towards fulfilling a higher destiny, the Destiny of the West.

Will “the people” be up to the challenge? We shall see. One thing is for sure — we cannot afford to waste the likes of a di Rienzi or a Mussolini. Such leaders need to be treasured, not to have their torn bodies hanged upside down for the amusement of the small-brained, milling mob.

It is time for a clean sweep. Reform is the enemy. Only complete rebirth can save us now.

Kalash girl with European features

From The Occidental Observer, October 11, 2009

I am sure most people are familiar with the typical definitions of ‘cuckoldry’ in which a woman is unfaithful to her unknowing male partner. Genetically speaking, the most severe form of cuckoldry occurs when the woman’s unfaithful behavior results in being impregnated by the “other man” — with the unknowing male partner being tricked to raise the other man’s offspring as if it were his own. This extreme example of maladaptive behavior is similar to the phenomenon of brood parasitism as practiced by several species, including the cuckoo bird, from which the term “cuckoldry” is derived. Humans or birds – the cuckolded organism suffers a drastic loss of biological fitness by raising as offspring young not their own.

As Dr. Frank Salter indicates in his ground breaking work on genetic interests (On Genetic Interests: Family, Ethnicity, and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration), these interests – which are ultimate interests to all evolved organisms – can exist at higher levels than mere individual and family. Genetic interests also exist at the level of population groups (“ethnies”). Thus, if cuckoldry occurs at the individual/family level and damages genetic interests, can it not also occur at the level of ethnicity and race, with even wider spread damage done to genetic interests? Can Racial Cuckoldry exist, in which people are misled into thinking that the genetically alien is actually a co-ethnic, and so invest in people with whom they share relatively little distinctive genetic information?

Note by “racial” in this context I mean pertaining to the “ethny” — which can be any genetically defined population (ethnic group, sub-race, race, etc.). Note also that Racial Cuckoldry — defined as the maladaptive investment in genetically alien ethnies and/or alien individuals who are mistakenly considered as belonging to your ethny — is linked to mimicry, that is, Racial Mimicry. Racial Mimicry is fairly straightforward — a member of one ethny mimics the outward characteristics of another ethny and, therefore, may be mistaken for a member of that other ethny.

An example of the racial cuckoldry paradigm is the case of the Kalash, as indicated by this post and comments thread at American Renaissance. The Kalash are an Asian Caucasian group that are, in general, fairer complexioned that the surrounding Pakistani population. Some fraction of the Kalash population, particularly children, are fair even by European standards (i.e., light-haired and light-eyed), and an even smaller percentage of the population may resemble some Europeans in facial features (although most Kalash are, clearly, phenotypically distinct from Europeans). . . . Read the whole article.

Franz von Stuck, The Kiss of the Sphinx

The internet is rife with rather stupid arguments against racial preservation, usually put forth by miscegenating whites.  These arguments can be boiled down to the following:

Whites as we know them today did not exist thousands of years ago and will not exist thousands of years in the future, regardless of breeding habits.  Look at the genetic differences of modern Europeans to the Paleolithic hunter-gatherers and Neolithic farmers [cites studies out of context].  The gene pools are different, so . . .

So, miscegenation is justified, since there is no race to preserve anyway.  It’s all “racial mysticism,” don’t you know.

Putting aside the obvious fact that one cannot look at past genetic changes and project them into a future in which migration, breeding patterns, and selective pressures will be totally different (putting aside that modern man now knows about genetics and kinship and could, if desired, intervene in the process), there is a more obvious point to be made.

All genepools shift over time, for reasons of genetic drift, even if for nothing else.  This change is natural and expected, even for the most isolated, endogamous, and homogeneous of populations.  This in no way alters racial preservation and ethnic genetic interests which are predicated on overall degrees of genetic similarity and on the preservation of racial genepools and racial characteristics to the extent possible for evolved organisms.

Thus, if European ethnies practice endogamy and engage in preservationist tactics in ethnostates, their genepools will change somewhat over time.  These changes will not be radical, and would not be expected to significantly alter the overall European genotype and phenotype. The European character of these future populations, and their relationship to today’s European populations, could be easily discerned by genetic assays.  Let’s fix the genetic distance/distinction between today’s Europeans and these putative unmixed future Europeans as “X.”

If, however, Europeans interbreed with non-whites, such as with sub-Saharan African “musicians” or with “hot Vietnamese girls,” then the genepool of this future hybrid Eurafrican/Eurasian population will be much, much more genetically different than modern Europeans – 10X, 20X, 100X, etc.  Changes in genetic structure due to panmixia would alter the genepool in ways that genetic drift and selective pressures never could, introducing new forms of linkage disequilibrium and genetic integration that would never would have occurred in the absence of miscegenation. The gaping logical flaw in these pro-mixing “arguments” is the equation of all forms of genetic change, ignoring the enormous qualitative and quantitative differences between the modest natural genetic changes in an endogamous population and the massive and irreversible genetic changes due to cross-racial intermixture.

And, by the way, Paleolithic and Neolithic Europeans, despite differences to modern Europeans, are much, much, much closer, genetically, to modern Europeans, than are, say, modern Nigerians or Vietnamese.  Hence, any future European population will be much, much, much genetically (and phenotypically) closer to today’s Europeans than are present day or future non-white groups.

As for other arguments, stating that traits such as “high IQ” and “low aggression” are all that matters and that concern for race is “racial mysticism” (does “familial mysticism” exist as well?), I’ve already answered all of these arguments in my writings on Salter’s genetic interests concept, as well as on “racial cuckoldry.”   Adaptive behavior is about genetic continuity/expansion.  Sure, positive phenotypic traits can aid in this; however, Europeans are well supplied with their own alleles for “high IQ” and other positive traits, and these can be increased through assortative mating, eugenics, etc.  One does not have to promote genocidal admixture, destroying genetic interests and parental kinship, to enhance the competitiveness of European genes in the global genepool.

Indeed, if the whole point is enhancing the competitiveness of European genotypes (and consequent phenotypes), then racial admixture should be eschewed, since such admixture eliminates the very genotypes (and phenotypes) we want to become more competitive.  One cannot “save Europeans” by transforming Europeans into Eurafricans and Eurasians.  That “method” would defeat the purpose.

Dr. Kevin MacDonald is a brilliant man whom I admire and whom I agree with on almost everything.  Dr. MacDonald states:

But what I take away from this is that the greatest danger to the cultural establishment is the existence of intelligent, well-written, well-documented, and fundamentally honest articles arguing for the importance of white identity and white interests.

Certainly, I am motivated to contribute such articles, to TOQ and to other forums, to assist in the process of promoting white interests.

I may agree with Prozium and Michael O’Meara considerably less than 100% of the time; however, I find no fault in their contributions to this series.  Prozium, who recently soundly thrashed Lee John Barnes [and here] of the British National Party and Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com, writes:

I had a rare personality type (one that I suspect many intelligent racialists share) that inclined me to care far more about truth than social status.

I believe the same applies to my case.  For example, in a debate between, say, Jared Taylor and Peter March or Tim Wise, the “socially acceptable” position is to agree with March/Wise and mindlessly denounce Taylor as a “hater.”  But, which positions represents truth?  Represents logic?  Whose position in these debates, if followed through on, would lead to adaptive behavior for persons of European descent?  And whose positions would lead to maladaptive behaviors leading to the destruction of the West and its peoples?  Taylor speaks for truth and for adaptive behavior, thus it is Taylor, and not the establishment mouthpieces, who should hold our attention and support.

The usually insightful O’Meara submits:

At this hopefully not-too-distant point, when white Americans awake to their fate as a people in the grips of an ethnocidal regime, I expect TOQ to become the metapolitical organ NOT of a revitalized, racially conscious right, but of a revolutionary nationalism assertive of the white man’s unique identity. It is for this that I write.

The key point there is “revolutionary.”  I am not at all interested in any form of “conservatism” whether it is of the “traditional,” “paleo,” or, especially, “neo” varieties.  What I am interested in, politically, is palingenetic themes and an avant-garde and Futurist orientation.  If this sounds much like the textbook definition of “fascism” then, very well, I am a “fascist” in the true sense of the word — not in any way associated with the layman’s use of the word as some sort of pejorative against reactionary rightists who are, in no way, shape, or form, truly fascist.

Revolutionary, palingenetic, avant-garde, and Futurist politics — while of some importance in and of themselves — are, more fundamentally, the means to achieve certain ends.  What are those ends?  They are the preservation of our ultimate interests — the continuity and/or expansion of our unique genetic information (i.e., our genetic interests) — in the context of a sociopolitical system that will both ensure the long-term stability of those interests while providing the environment for Western man to express his true nature and reach for the stars.  To the stars should be our goal — literally as well as figuratively — instead of to the gutter which is to where we are presently descending in this era of globalist multiracialism and multiculturalism.

An important part of my work is promoting, defending, extending, and integrating the fundamentally important work of Dr. Frank Salter on genetic interests, particularly ethnic genetic interests.  Promoting is important since an unfortunate reality is that this work has been ignored by the people — including nationalist politicians and racialist activists — who need it the most.  The scant attention Salter’s work has heretofore received has been in inverse relation to its world-historical importance.  Defending the work is important because a mendacious group of individuals hostile to the ideals of TOQ have unfairly maligned Salter and his work; e.g., leftist “academics” (with “beautiful” mixed race relatives), Asian supremacists and their white puppets, etc.  Extension is important because I, and others, see Salter’s work as incomplete without the inclusion of genetic structure into the equation.  Finally, the work of Salter must be integrated into the philosophy of nationalism and ethnoracial identity.  Here is where the whole Empiricism (e.g., Guessedworker) vs. Myth (e.g., O’Meara and Prozium) debate went off the tracks.  This is a topic to be dealt with later; however, there is a misunderstanding perhaps between means and ends.

The ENDS in question are those described above, the preservation of European genotypes and the creation of environments where those genotypes, and the phenotypes resulting from those genotypes, can flourish.  The MEANS to achieve those ends can be flexible and dependent upon context.  For some individuals, rational empiricism will suffice.  For many (most?) others, some sort of overarching “myth”– some type of inspiring, not purely materialistic worldview — is required to motivate to engage in the battle to achieve the ends in question.  As long as a given type of “mean” does not harm the ultimate “ends” then whatever works is good.  One must be careful — very careful — to ensure that means do not conflict with ends; thorough analysis is necessary.  Any means, no matter how effective, that ultimately impair the achievement of the ends, are means that must be eschewed.  But as long as the means truly do help achieve the ends, does it matter whether these means are “myth” or empiricism?  It would be great if empirical rationalism could directly motivate; but the struggles to get people to digest the work of Salter suggests that the medicine of genetic interests must be sweetened with a healthy dose of “myth.”  These two perspectives need not be incompatible.

I also promote a form of pan-European nationalism which is wholly compatible with narrower focused interests in nation and/or subrace.  Here is where Barnes of the BNP is totally wrong.  Barnes completely misrepresents what “white nationalism” is about.  To him a Briton has the choice between either (1) being interested only in the British peoples without caring one whit about any other Europeans, or (2) being interested in all Europeans exactly equally and not caring if native Brits are replaced by Poles.  That is absolute stupidity; nothing prevents a British “white nationalist” from having as his primary allegiance his own national ethny, but also having a strong interest in the well being of the European peoples as a whole.  I certainly do not expect a BNP member to spend his time agonizing over ethnic competition between Russians and Chinamen in the Russian Far East; this activist has more pressing concerns in London, Liverpool, and Edinburgh.  On the other hand, why should this activist be completely indifferent about whether Slavs or Mongolids prevail on the Amur?  Why can’t a British activist invest his energies along a sliding scale of ethnoracial identity and genetic relatedness, with the most invested for his core ethny, but reserving a healthy portion for the greater race and civilization?  And can’t guys like Barnes understand that enlightened self-interest mandates a less purely provincial attitude?  How will the long term survival of the British peoples be better maintained — as part of a greater, white, European West, or as an isolated white island in a brown, black and yellow ex-”European” sea?  Doesn’t it matter whether the nation across the channel is a white, western, French France, or if it is a non-white Third World Islamic Republic?  There are none so blind and those who will not see — time for Barnes and cohorts to get Seeing Eye dogs.

Pan-European cooperation and solidarity need not be at odds with more restricted particularisms.  Both the whole and all constituent parts of that whole need to be preserved and defended.  This can, and should, be synergistic and not antagonistic.

I have other interests as well, but the major point here is that I wish to make the contributions that I am capable of, focusing on certain key issues such as genetic interests, nationalism, and politics, joining with others (e.g., MacDonald, Prozium, O’Meara) to create an intellectual Western nationalist vanguard to help save both race and civilization.

The suicide of the West is far more than a figure of speech. All Western societies — and only Western societies — are voluntarily allowing mass immigration of peoples who are not ethnically connected to historical Europe. Not only are they allowing massive non-White immigration, it is being promoted as fulfilling the lofty ethical goal of increasing ethnic diversity rather than any practical goal such as the needs of the labor force.  What this means in the long run is that Europe will cease to be Europe, not only culturally, but also genetically.

There are several ways that one might think about this phenomenon, but certainly a compelling one is to think in terms of Frank Salter’s concept of ethnic genetic interests. EGI is of fundamental importance for ethnic and racial nationalism, and for the preservation of European-derived peoples because it provides a powerful intellectual counterargument to those on the left who deny the reality of race. . . . Read the rest of the article

Concerned individuals have awaited a comprehensive and honest study of these issues. The wait is over. Dr. Frank Salter has published just such an analysis in the journal Population and Environment (Vol. 24, No. 2, November 2002, pages 111-140), entitled: “Estimating Ethnic Genetic Interests: Is it Adaptive to Resist Replacement Migration?” He has then followed this crucially important article with an even more detailed study in the book, On Genetic Interests: Family, Ethnicity, and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2007). The following summarizes Dr. Salter’s work.

Basic Considerations
Essentially, life as we know it is ultimately about the propagation of distinctive genetic information from one generation to the next. Living organisms can be seen as the vehicles by which this propagation occurs. Family members share many of the same distinctive genetic information, so a person’s fitness is increased by the survival and reproductive success of his or her family. This is true also for population groups, or “ethnies,” a term which can refer to races, ethnic groups, and/or various subgroupings of these. Like families, members of an ethny have more distinctive genetic information in common with each other than they do with people of other populations. Although the genetic relationship of ethny members is more diluted than that of family members, ethnies are larger reservoirs of genetic interests for their members because of their size, which can number in the many millions Therefore, it can be as adaptive, or more so, to support one’s ethnic or racial group as it would be to support one’s own family.

A defined territory is crucial for the survival of an ethny. In the long run, territory is crucial for survival, and human history is largely a record of groups expanding and contracting, conquering or being conquered, migrating or being displaced by migrants. The loss of territory, whether by military defeat or displacement by migrants, brings ethnic diminishment or destruction–precisely what is happening in the “multicultural” West today. An important part of Dr. Salter’s work is a quantitative analysis of this negative genetic impact.

Carrying Capacity
Dr. Salter’s analysis is based on two concepts: carrying capacity and genetic kinship. Carrying capacity is the maximum population that can live in a given territory. Although technology and increased economic efficiency can increase carrying capacity, there is a practical limit above which further population growth is not possible.

Many ecologists believe we are approaching, or have surpassed, the practical carrying capacity of the Earth. Even if these ecologists are wrong about the Earth as a whole, it is clear that carrying capacity has already been exceeded in those areas where over-population has badly damaged the environment or depleted natural resources.

Immigration undermines the interests of natives even if their territory has not reached its carrying capacity. For example, the carrying capacity of the United States is probably significantly greater than its current population. However, one day its carrying capacity will be reached, and if at that point part of the country is filled with the descendants of today’s immigrants, natives will have no room into which they can expand. In other words, even if the carrying capacity of the United States is as high as 600 million or more, if that population figure is ever reached, some portion will be the descendants of alien immigrants. The presence of millions of non-whites will make the parts of the United States they occupy unavailable to whites. We may reach carrying capacity later rather than sooner, but since the earth is a “closed system,” it will happen eventually. The same principles apply to any other nation, including the nations of Europe, many of which are more densely populated that is the United States.

Kinship and Child Equivalents
It is important to note that Dr. Salter treats the arrival of immigrants, not as a simple addition to the population, but as a one-for-one displacement of natives. This is methodologically correct, because when a nation reaches its carrying capacity, it is the presence of immigrants and their descendants that makes it impossible for natives to increase their numbers. What may not appear to be one-for-one displacement today will, in retrospect, be seen to be precisely that. The other concept central to Dr. Salter’s argument is genetic kinship. Even though all humans share much genetic information, kinship is a measure of the genetic similarities and differences above and beyond this general genetic sharing.

Dr. Salter expresses the loss of genetic interest in units he calls “child-equivalents.” In other words, Dr. Salter is asking: for any given member of the native population, what is the number of lost children that would equal the loss of his or her genetic interests caused by the arrival of a certain number of alien peoples? Note that we are not talking about actual children, but genetic equivalents put into the form of the parent-child relationship.

Put differently, the arrival of immigrants from other ethnies will change the genetic character of a population, and make it more alien to every member of the native ethny. The amount of genetic change, from the point of view of any given member of the native group, can be calculated as the equivalent of the number of children not born to that person. This is putting a number on the replacement of members of one group by members of another. Some examples will make this clearer.

The data that Dr. Salter used for these calculations derives from genetic assays. Please note that these specific studies are somewhat dated, although the most basic findings have been replicated in more recent research. It is very important to note that these data almost certainly underestimate the extent of genetic interests and underestimate the genetic damage done by immigration and multiracialism. That is because not only are the original studies somewhat dated and not as detailed as later work, but the findings do not include differences inherent in higher order genetic structure, which also contribute to genetic interests.

Dr. Salter begins by considering the English as the native population, and examines the effects of the immigration of 10,000 Danes, an ethny that is genetically very close to the English. Replacing 10,000 Englishmen with 10,000 Danes changes the genetic characteristics of the population so much that the resulting “post-displacement” population differs from the undisturbed population by the equivalent of an Englishman (or woman) “not having had” 167 children! Again, we are not talking about actual children, but of the genetic equivalent.

Effects of Immigration and a Multiracial Society
Let us consider other examples. What if the immigrants were Bantus–a population very genetically distant from the English–rather than Danes? Here the genetic cost to any given Englishman of the arrival of 10,000 Bantus is the equivalent of 10,854 lost children! Clearly, the extent of the genetic transformation of a population depends on the genetic distance between the native and immigrant populations.

What if the levels of immigration were greater, and more in keeping with the massive displacement of Western peoples we observe today? If 12.5 million Englishmen were replaced by an equal number of Danes, the genetic loss to each individual Englishman would be the equivalent of 209,000 children not born; if the immigrants were from India, the loss would be 2.6 million children; if the immigrants were Bantus, 13 million.

These figures are not “guesses”; they are objective, mathematical results based on genetic data. As stated above, these figures likely underestimate the real genetic damage.

It is also important to stress that this loss is not somehow reduced by being spread over the entire native population. The loss in terms of genetic equivalents reflects the change in population from the point of view of every member of the native populace. Dr. Salter writes: “For a native woman it is equivalent to the loss of her children and grandchildren, for a native man it is equivalent to the loss of his children and grandchildren, though on a much larger scale” (emphasis in original paper).

To further illustrate these points Salter then determines the number of immigrants of group y necessary to reduce the genetic interests of a random member of native group x by one child equivalent. For Europeans, an average of only 1.1 African or 1.7 Northeast Asian immigrants is sufficient for the loss of one child equivalent. In other words, using conservative genetic data that likely underestimate these effects, the presence of about one African, or about two Northeast Asians, damages the genetic interests of a typical white (i.e., of European ancestry) person to a degree equivalent to that of losing a child. This is a powerful and personal argument against racially alien immigration and against a multiracial society.

While plunging birthrates may be damaging for European-derived peoples, their replacement by genetically alien immigrants is much worse. A falling birthrate reduces the population but does not transform it, and a future increase in birthrates can always make up for the loss. Once immigrants have established themselves in a territory their genes are a permanent addition.

From the standpoint of genetic interests, the idea that “immigration makes up for low native birthrates” is pathological. The assertion that immigrants must be imported for “economic” reasons, or for some other short-sighted rationale, is therefore exposed as incredibly destructive to the interests of the natives.

Any consideration of the costs vs. benefits of immigration–or of a multiracial society in general–must absolutely consider the costs incurred at the most basic, most personal, and most fundamental human level. After all, humans are living, breathing organisms–”economic growth” or other issues are important only insofar as they influence real, living humans and human interests. A people do not “benefit” from “X” if “X” results in that people’s displacement and their replacement by others to an extent equivalent to mass murder.

Genetically, mass alien immigration is genocide. Similarly, a multicultural, multiracial society that manages the demographic eclipse of its majority population is also practicing genocide. These are facts which cannot be responsibly evaded.

Biopolitics
This is not meant to inspire dislike or anger towards immigrants–or towards any other people. On the contrary, such emotions are self-defeating and counter-productive. After all, these peoples are only taking advantage of the opportunities given to them for a better life and to expand their numbers in other peoples’ lands.

No, the ultimate causes of Western decline are that the governments and “leaders” of the West are openly and actively betraying the interests of their own peoples, and that the peoples of the West themselves, all too comfortable and unconcerned with their own demise, are seemingly uninterested in defending their interests. Or is it that Westerners are grossly uninformed about where their real interests lie?

Thus, this essay has three basic purposes. First, to introduce the fundamentally important concept of genetic interests–which are ultimate interests–to Western peoples. Second, to explain, succinctly but precisely, what is at stake: the demographic decline of an entire people, with a consequent devastating personal loss for each and every member of that people. Third, to encourage Western peoples, so informed, to engage in legal, peaceful, non-violent, and rational sociopolitical activism to pursue their genetic interests. Which means: to ensure their own survival.

What is required is the practice of biopolitics –the fusion of biological, human concerns with political action and public policy initiatives. Westerners need to stop focusing exclusively on secondary issues such as economics and economic growth, “cultural assimilation,” employment opportunities, funding for pensions, and a myriad of other concerns which–while certainly important and certainly worthy of interest and consideration–pale in significance compared to the ultimate problem of demographic displacement.

Survival comes first. All else comes second. Genetic interests come first. Other interests come second. Biopolitics will reorder priorities in the recognition that the well being of the Peoples of the West first requires that these peoples continue to exist. Biopolitics will ensure that they do.

This essay is adapted from an analysis of Dr. Salter’s work that was published in the February 2003 issue of the journal American Renaissance.