Greg Johnson has penned an essay about Oswald Spengler and racial decadence that arrives at some pretty sweeping conclusions. A few days ago, Robert Campbell altered me to the existence of this article in a telephone conversation.
Three Senses of Race
Cutting to the meat of the essay, Greg Johnson starts off by arguing that race exists in three primary senses, the biological, cultural, and psychological:
1.) Race can refer to populations which vary by geography in gene frequencies and phenotype.
2.) Race can refer to having “racial consciousness.”
3.) Race can prefer to a primordial, life affirming, vital determination to expand and propagate and expand your tribe.
Nothing to argue with here. I would only dispute the idea that “racial consciousness” is “backward looking” whereas race in the psychological sense is “forward looking.”
In Colonial America, racial consciousness and race in the psychological sense evolved out of pre-existing English ideas and attitudes. Both were a response to the environmental conditions faced by Englishmen in the New World. The settlers took elements of their tradition (i.e., the concepts of just war and private property) and adapted them to their circumstances.
In the eighteenth century, Americans began the project of racial classification and interpretation of racial differences. “Science” itself (a method of understanding the natural world) is a tradition that stretches back into the Middle Ages and Greco-Roman Antiquity.
There is no conflict between “progress” and “tradition.” The only way to make “progress” is by working within the bounds of a tradition. This is most clearly seen in the history of technology where incremental advances in existing technology have led to new conceptual breakthroughs. Thus, the telegraph evolved over time into the cell phone, or the Kitty Hawk into the Columbia space shuttle.
Race and Culture
Having established the three senses of race (biological, cultural, and psychological), Greg Johnson moves on to argue that race informs culture, and vice versa. Nothing to argue with here either.
The societies built by Europeans are an extended phenotype. They reflect underlying heritable characteristics like intelligence and personality traits. At the same time, cultural memes (which are not heritable) are constantly influencing mate selection, which over time will change a population at the biological level.
Race Platonism and Race Traditionalism
Following Spengler, Greg Johnson next begins to discuss “Race Platonism” and “Race Traditionalism,” which he defines as 1.) that racial archetypes that are immutable forms and 2.) that the modern races have degenerated from ideal forms that existed in the distant past.
Both are easily dismissed.
“Race Traditionalism” is easily refuted by the fossil evidence of archaeology. “Race Platonism” is refuted by everything we know about modern biology and genetics.
If all racial minority groups were expelled from North America tomorrow, the White population would still evolve. Natural selection would continue to operate on mutations and genetic drift. In the absence of gene flow, Whites and non-Whites would eventually diverge into separate species.
Change is inevitable.
Outside of the “Radical Traditionalist” community, this idea is uncontroversial in White Nationalist circles.
Racial Preservation – Getting It Wrong
Having established the three types of race, the fact that culture informs race, and that genetic change is inevitable, Greg Johnson moves into more controversial territory. He declares that “racial preservation” is tantamount to “death.”
Johnson’s error begins in setting up a straw man of racial preservation. The ideal of “racial preservation” is not analogous to, say, killing a deer and having a taxidermist mount it on your wall, as everyone recognizes that gene frequencies change in each generation.
“Racial preservation” means nothing more than declaring that some traits (i.e., fair skin, fair hair, fair eyes, high intelligence, amiable personality, etc.) should be favored, selected, and encouraged in our culture.
This can be easily accomplished: Whites and non-Whites can be geographically separated, non-White immigration can be banned, the traditional American racial ideal can be promoted in all types of media, miscegenation can be outlawed, the tax code could be altered to encourage eugenic marriages, social services that deter family formation can be eliminated, etc.
If American culture and public policy was changed tomorrow, say, to reflect the White Nationalist racial idea, the United States would become more racially and culturally European over time, which is exactly what happened between Reconstruction and the the Civil Rights Movement. When JFK was elected president, America was almost 90% White; this happened by design, not by accident.
Racial Purity – Getting It More Wrong
After developing this idea that “racial preservation” is “death,” through an interpretation of Oswald Spengler, Greg Johnson goes on to attack the idea of “racial purity,” which he claims is incompatible with race in the psychological sense as a viral, life affirming world outlook.
Historically speaking, it only takes a moment’s reflection to dismiss this idea. In Colonial America, the ideal of racial preservation and race in the psychological sense evolved together and complemented each other. “Racial purity” meant nothing more than the determination of English settlers to preserve their European phenotype.
The frontiersmen had the will to power to seize land, clear it of Indians, and erect towns and cities. As White settlement expanded along the Atlantic seaboard, the first anti-miscegenation laws were passed; a racial caste system emerged; an elaborate code of racial etiquette began to govern racial interaction.
The “healthy men of race” – the American settlers – were expansionists who still thought of themselves as Englishmen, increasingly thought of themselves as Whites, and eventually codified their ideal of racial preservation into law. Like Americans have always done, they thought about the past, present, and the future.
There is no opposition between “vitality” and “racial purity.” If that were the case, 350 years of American history would be incomprehensible.
White Nationalism Is Degenerate – Jumping the Tracks
Greg Johnson concludes that “racial preservation” is “death” (from 1665 to 1967, America was dead) and that “racial purity” is somehow opposed to “vitality” (like when we conquered the North American continent). The next logical step is to conclude that White Nationalism is “overwhelmingly a degenerate movement.”
White Nationalism is condemned as degenerate … because, somehow, White Nationalists don’t want to Whites to evolve into the Talosians from Star Trek or Elves from Lord of the Rings. By advocating racial preservation (i.e., erecting barriers to non-White admixture), we are “murdering” and “mummifying” our race.
Well, I disagree.
Greg Johnson is condemning the healthy elements of White Nationalism as degenerate. By healthy, I mean White Nationalists advocate America’s traditional racial and cultural ideals over modern progressive ones, which is to say, we select for European phenotype.
Among other things, White Nationalists want to separate the races, ban miscegenation, increase the birthrate, and promote aesthetic images of White beauty and health in the media. What is degenerate about that?
Progressives advocate miscegenation, race anarchy, White guilt, transfers of wealth from Whites to non-Whites, third world immigration, multiculturalism, affirmation action, and diversity. If there is something “healthy” about the progressive agenda (the first interracial kiss occurred on Star Trek), I certainly have never seen it.
White Nationalists are degenerates, but not for the reasons Greg Johnson describes. The problem is that White Nationalists, even the ones who have given up America (yours truly included), are still culturally American themselves. Even the most diehard racialists are only a few degrees mentally removed from the American cultural mainstream.
The same degeneracy that afflicts American culture in general (expressive individualism being the best example) has deeply penetrated the White Nationalist movement. When Neo-Nazis parade through Toledo, they are simply carrying on the long established avant-garde tradition of shocking the bourgeoisie. When White Nationalists get piercings and tattoos, they are merely aping their aracial peers.
I could continue to list examples, but the two above are sufficient to establish my point. White Nationalists are not immune to their cultural environment. It is a constant struggle to separate ourselves, mentally and physically, from the sewage that pulsates through our culture. Even the best of us are subtly influenced by it.
A “Vital” White Nationalism
Now that “racial preservation” has been labeled “death,” “racial purity” called “mummifying the race,” and White Nationalism has been pronounced “an overwhelmingly degenerate movement,” Greg Johnson wants to create a new vital White Nationalism, and has a few ideas as to how to go about this.
His starting point: the “animal vitality” of a Star Trek convention. I’ve known Trekkies in the past. None of them have struck me as particularly virile. Quite the opposite.
Johnson diagnoses the problem: White Nationalism is “conservative,” which is to say, “backward looking,” devitalized, decadent, decadent, and gloomy. Star Trek is “progressive,” which means forward-looking, optimistic, and hopeful.
Come on, Greg.
This isn’t even a good interpretation of Star Trek. In TOS, Captain Kirk fought the Klingons. In TNG, the show bombed until the Borg were created as a villain. The Deep Space Nine series was entirely about war with a race called “The Dominion.” Voyager bombed until the Borg returned as the major villain. Finally, Enterprise was a flop, even after the directors tried to revive the show through a grab bag of conflicts with the Klingons, Borg, Xindi, and Romulans. In the latest Star Trek movie, a Romulan time traveler destroys Vulcan, the home planet of Spock.
There are no social penalties (aside from nerdiness) with being labeled a Trekkie. No one loses their job or goes to prison for watching Star Trek. No one utterly dehumanizes Trekkies. They are not socially ostracized by their own families. This is a really bad analogy.
In Johnson’s view, a “vital White Nationalist movement” would be a “utopian, progressivist, eugenicist mythical-cultural phenomenon.” Maybe something like a combination of Star Trek and Lord of the Rings. I think this prescription speaks more to Johnson’s aesthetic and intellectual tastes than it does to reality.
History: Our Guide
Greg Johnson thinks we should look to the future as our guide. I think we should look to our past. What factors motivated White Americans to seize their racial destiny and conquer a continent?
Answer: it was a combination of things.
The American colonies were established out of religious, commercial, and geopolitical motives. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the English wanted to rid themselves of a swarming underclass, compete with France and Spain in the New World, create an outlet for their industrial production and a source of raw materials, and bring the Gospel to the New World.
As Virginia and the other colonies matured, Americans expropriated land from the Indians. The Indians were considered savages, heathens, and non-Whites. They were squatting on land which the colonists could develop and build into a free society. For racial, ethnic, religious, moral, and economic reasons, the Indians were dispossessed and pushed further West.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, science labeled non-Whites inferior, and studies were produced that convinced the brightest minds to support segregation. Greedy settlers motivated by self-interest poured into Indian lands. Racial idealism and geopolitical rivalry with Britain motivated Americans annex Texas and seize the West from Mexico.
In sum, Americans conquered North America for commercial, religious, geopolitical, cultural, political, moral, racial, ethnic, intellectual and self-interested reasons. Everything from racial idealism to religion to science to morality to divine providence was cited to justify the expropriation.
The lesson to be learned from this is that White Nationalists should appeal to the full suite of human interests, not any specific one, to justify the reconquest.
Devitalization
What crippled the American project?
One European bad idea after another: liberalism, anti-slavery, natural rights ideology, communism, democracy, capitalism, millenarianism, anarchism, fascism, anti-racism, expressive individualism, libertarianism, postmodernism, feminism, nihilism, humanism, etc.
The effete sons of rough frontiersmen became infatuated and possessed by these abstract ideas. These abstractions were pushed to ever newer extremes at the expense of common sense, self interest, and tradition. When combined with material abundance, they produced the moral rot which has always been the source of republican decline.
Oswald Spengler can be included in this category: Western Civilization is doomed, cultures go through life cycles, we are living in the terminal phase of civilization. I can’t think of a better prescription for helplessness and inaction than Spenglerian historical determinism.
Revitalizing the White Nationalist movement lies in recapturing the racial attitude of our pioneer ancestors. The solution does not lie in the dust covered books of long dead European philosophers.
How many children did Nietzsche have? How many children did Spengler have? How many children did Evola have? How many children did Francis Parker Yockey have? How many children does Greg Johnson have? Oh, wait, Greg acknowledges he’s “degenerate”, so as to excuse himself in advance from actually being held to his own standards.
A transcendent worldview that stresses the duty to have children could be useful, but there’s no indication “Radical Traditionalism” is that worldview or has the potential to produce such a worldview. I’m all in favor of mysticism that produces results. In this case, all the mysticism is accomplishing is confusing what are fairly straightforward issues.
The people reproducing the most today are doing so not because of greater “vitality” or “race”, but because they are less able to correctly use birth control.
Nor can mysticism transform Armenians into Northern Europeans.
Greg Johnson hits and misses. All of us do. This is a miss.
Good response, Hunter.
I think Greg’s essay is more of a personal nature, rather than well-reasoned, perhaps protecting his racially mixed friends and in response to whatever caused him to go his own way.
“Greg Johnson hits and misses. All of us do. This is a miss.”
OK. But isn’t your essay based on his?
Why should we worry about hits and misses, when its our mission to build culture. We’re here to define the target, and when we’ve all had our turns at missing, the only thing remaining unobliterated will be bullseye of racial self-awareness.
There’s nothing wrong with fascism.
Fascism was included in the list because its lasting influence on the post-WW2 American racialist scene. Americans can’t help but look silly when they parade around in Nazi costumes.
Jesus, Hunter. Not this again.
After reading your essay I couldn’t help imagining you roaming around James Town dressed like Paul Revere. Is that any better than jack boots?
Jimmy Marr,
“After reading your essay I couldn’t help imagining you roaming around James Town dressed like Paul Revere. Is that any better than jack boots?”
Actually yes. It is American patriotism, not favoring a regime that declared war on America. It is also better PR for patriotic White Americans.
With the proper bridge, it could use the same symbolism used by the Tea Party Movement and Ron Paul Revolution-and thus subtlely co-opt followers.
“regime that declared war on America”
Dont’ be facile. Some of you youngsters need to pool your money and buy a bookshelf. Matt Parrott’s living room is crying out for it.
If you’re going to shun the European race in favor of preoccupying yourselves with colonial Americana, I suggest you think seriously about what “colonization” actually means.
Actually, I am going to Jamestown soon. I would never dress up like Paul Revere though.
There are people who dress up like Continential Army soldiers at the Tea Party rallies. They don’t attract near as much negative attention as Neo-Nazis.
The problem of culture is that a great many Whites don’t have one. In the place where a culture ought to be, they have instead an ever-changing stew of prejudices, constantly being amended by their Jewish masters. A culture is a pattern of ideas and practices that evolves in response to a people’s circumstances. What this country has is “cultural product”, carefully manufactured by people who are knowledgeable about psychology and human weakness, and sold by people who hate us. Note how homo marriage has gone from “unheard of” to “fundamental right” in about five years. No real culture is so malleable.
If we want to restore America to racial sanity, it is important to understand how Americans came to be racially conscious in the first place.
Hint: It was not through reading European philosophers.
With the notable exceptions of Charles Darwin and Francis Galton, fashionable European intellectual trends have tended to have the opposite effect here.
And , we wouldn’t want to attract attention to ourselves now, would we?
It’s spin mate. Look at a swastika and tell me what you see.
Today’s “negative” attention is tomorrows supremacy.
Jimmy Marr: It’s a fact that Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy declared war on the U.S., making the old bastard Roosevelt’s job easier. Most Americans today are likely unaware of the repeated provocations we carried out, and so most likely place all the blame on the Germans. If you want to bring people to White Nationalism, leave out the WW2 revisionism and use what remains of our own national mythology to persuade them, along with our present day grievances. Convince Whites to oppose our own dispossession, and you won’t have to worry about the injustices done to our fascist brethren.
“Today’s ‘negative’ attention is tomorrows supremacy.”
When the negative attention comes from everybody except a tiny preexisting clique, I’m not sure how that leads to supremacy.
Hunter: “Greg Johnson hits and misses. All of us do. This is a miss.”
Excellent essay, Hunter. I was terribly disappointed in Greg’s article, and was considering my own response. You’ve saved me the trouble.
You mention that “Revitalizing the White Nationalist movement lies in recapturing the racial attitude of our pioneer ancestors.” I agree, but one can counter that those attitudes arose under a particular set of circumstances, and since those particular circumstances don’t hold true at the present time – and can’t be recreated – then something new is required.
It is creating that “something new” that should be our project. A synthesis, if you will, bringing together and putting forth a new worldview. A worldview that balances and reconciles the tribe, economics, philosophy, religion, morality, ethics…everything. Or at least everything that our limited capacity allows us to recognize as important in human affairs.
That’s how we are going to get a “vital White Nationalism.” That’s how we go beyond mere critique and toward a vibrant white nationalism that has legs, can go places, and win us not only a nation, but all of our homelands back.
Not too long ago, I asked posters here to describe the racial attitudes that prevailed in their (presumably) suburban neighborhoods of the 70’s and 80’s. Guess what? That racial feeling was still there. Very different circumstances to those that won whites a continent, yet the feeling was still there.
And, despite additional decades of massive PC propaganda and indoctrination, it’s STILL there. But we haven’t given it life, we haven’t adapted it, we haven’t shaped it into a vision that wins great lands. That is our job, and yes it is first and foremost an intellectual task. Until we get that foundation built, anything we develop in the real world will be weak and vulnerable. That’s not good enough.
And that’s where Greg comes in, trying to encourage a “vital White Nationalism.” Hell, at least he’s attempting to come up with something that moves us forward. Greg clearly understands that people are moved by a lot more than critique, which is mostly what we offer. Hence the need for a positive vision and worldview. Nothing wrong with critique, but it is not enough to get us where we need to go.
Unfortunately, the grievous errors in the essay overshadow the positive. Are the errors Spengler’s or Greg’s, or both? Hard to say. Certainly Greg didn’t do enough to distance himself from the false premises and conclusions, assuming he doesn’t share them.
In any event, the important thing is that we get on with the work of our time.
“declared” is the operative term. The US had been in an undeclared economic and naval against Germany for a some time prior to any public declarations.
The successful US strategy was the penultimate “Eight Pronged Goad” against Japan which triggering the declared stage. The crippled Roosevelt and his Jew handlers knew that Hitler, being an Aryan, would stand by his vow to join Japan in any war against her even if death was inevitable.
To my way of thinking this is exactly what Nietzche described as the greatest of human attributes: a willingness to “go down”. I think he used a tightrope analogy in “Thus Spake Zarathustra”.
I see this same analogy in WNs who wont’ “go down” and take their NS lashes. Its OK with me if they don’t, but I can’t say I see them or their posterity as sharing in the full glory of any Aryan resurrection if they are unwilling to endure the stigma now.
But what good is speaking if nobody will listen? That’s why I think it best to shy away from any symbology or other extraneous stuff which will cast us in a bad light, since we already have an uphill climb as it is.
Jimmy Marr said…
Dont’ be facile. Some of you youngsters need to pool your money and buy a bookshelf. Matt Parrott’s living room is crying out for it.
WTF!? I have the Great Books of the Western World set in the frickin’ background! It does not get more fancy than that. When people walk into my house, they see Euripides, Galileo, and Dostoevsky. I bet you have one of those motion-activated singing fishes in the background of your YouTube videos.
But the White people who are reproducing the most are doing so because of serious religious commitment. Mormons, FLDS and Hutterites.
When I was at Auburn, I checked out and read thousands of books in the college library. I personally own thousands of books. I’ve read Spengler, Yockey, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Plato, Aristotle, MacIntyre, etc.
A really smart fellow wrote:
Anyone who traces out their family tree, will not have to go back very far before they find a bastard or two, in polite langauge a child born out of wedlock. The same thing goes for adoption, which only in the last 60 or 70 years has become a formal process in most of the United States. Before then children were often left on the proverbial doorstep. Then there are children with the same mother, and different fathers, legal or otherwise. 🙂
Hopefully all of the mistakes were White. But, in reality?
Earl
Spengler may have been a pessimist, but history will prove him right about the coming collapse of the West and its fatally Jew-corrupted civilization. And this is a good thing, not a bad thing. The Age of Chaos (Toynbee) now on the event-horizon will clear away all sorts of racial, political, economic, and cultural dead-wood….thus sparing us the task. “All” we will have to do is fill the soon-to-be-dead forms with new content.
Sorry, I think Johnson is right and possibly you’re not reading his words carefully.
Johnson wrote:
The white nationalist movement, which seeks the salvation of nature’s fairest and most talented race, is less capable of motivating real world activity than Star Trek, a silly but entertaining set of movies and TV shows about multiracial and miscegenating liberals who live in Tupperware, dress in pajamas, and fly around the galaxy preaching high-minded, hypocritical twaddle about tolerance and pluralism and diversity.
Even if we correct for the differences in the size of audiences, Trekkies accomplish more in the real world than an equal number of white nationalists.
Why is that? It has nothing to do with idealism. Both movements are highly idealistic. It has everything to do with animal vitality. For all its silliness, there is something about Star Trek that motivates human action and creativity—that taps into pure animal vitality—better than white nationalism.
Trekkies get married to other Trekkies and have geeky kids.
White Nationalists often don’t have kids.
The point is that a genetic group that doesn’t make babies is doomed.
“Racial preservation” is the wrong ideal – really vital races make lots of babies, regardless of whether they’re thinking about “racial preservation.”
I suppose the best possible ideal would be “racial growth,” which would be more optimistic and forward-thinking than “racial preservation.”
Disclaimer: I don’t have any kids, so I’m decadent.
When I was at Auburn, I checked out and read thousands of books in the college library.
I don’t see why you’re so opposed to the rad-trads’ myth-making since you’re clearly not immune to or incapable of a bit of mythologizing of your own. Even if you “only” read one thousand books during college, that’s 250 books per year, or five books per week. And if you read two thousand — which you’d have to have to justify the plural thousands — that’s ten per week, which is not even counting the material you’d have to have read for your coursework (although there would be some overlap). Are you seriously claiming you did this?
Old Americans held the attitudes they did because essentially “no one” at that point had developed any sort of meaningful relations with non-whites. As time went by and those relations began to develop, beliefs about the undesirability of others began to be abandoned, starting with the most untenable and progressing to the most plausible and realistic but unflattering. It’s difficult to see how the intensity of racial beliefs that you require could again be developed, and especially difficult to see how, if developed, they could be applied indiscriminately to all racial others — the (apparent) requirement that they so be itself being a considerable obstacle to the feelings developing in the first place.
You don’t get the degeneracy of standard-issue WN off the hook by declaring it a product of its cultural milieu. Well, you might — if you had all the time in the world. But you don’t have all the time in the world.
n/a,
People have ties with people of not precisely the same ethnic or genetic stock that they’re loath to be separated from. That’s an entirely human thing — all too human, you might lament. You’re very quick to dismiss others’ ideas (on what are admittedly warranted grounds) but how do you propose to get around it?
Hunter, I visited Jamestown last year. Prepare to be disappointed. It was a glorified diversity sensitivity seminar. You’d swear that slavery and racism were the sum total of American history.
silver,
I can say with no exaggeration that I checked out and read thousands of books as an Auburn undergraduate. On any given week, I had 15 to 20 books checked out of there. This went on for five years.
It is untrue that Southern Whites didn’t have meaningful relationships with blacks under Jim Crow. Black servants often lived in the same household. Black mammies nursed White babies. Blacks and Whites were far more likely to live in the same neighborhoods.
Culturally speaking, the South was more integrated under Jim Crow than it is today. You can see this in any small town. The older blacks and Whites still share the same culture.
There has been a progressive deculturalization of Southern blacks. My grandparents generation (grew up in the 30s and 40s) had a lot in common culturally with Southern blacks. My father’s generation (grew up in the 60s and 70s) less so, but still quite a lot.
Culturally speaking, my generation (growing up in the 90s and 00s) has radically less in common with Southern blacks. The blacks my age stand out as utterly alien in culture.
The old sense of paternalism that grew up under Jim Crow has been vanquished. Young White Southerners no longer think of blacks as “our negroes.” There is no sentimental attachment to them.
It has been at least twelve generations since Southern Whites lived among “raw negroes.” It is probably easier to encourage this sense of alienation and polarization than ever before.
My father’s generation cannot understand the need for a White ethnostate because they grew up among so many blacks who were at least superficially Southerners in culture. It is much easier to come around to separatism when 90% of the blacks you know are the thuggish, gangbanger types.
I just re-read my essay to see if I did not make my message clear, if I did something to invite the kind of misunderstandings evident in this thread. But no, the fault is not mine. Judge for yourselves:
http://www.counter-currents.com/2010/07/is-racial-purism-decadent/
Reading and pondering Spengler was a powerful and disturbing experience. It forced me to reflect upon my own defects and the defects I have observed in other white nationalists.
I am sure that this explains why so few people get it. Nobody likes confronting his own flaws.
This is what I saw when I held up Spengler’s mirror before the White Nationalist movement: For the most part, WNs today lack race in Spengler’s psychological sense: it is full of people without the individual, vital procreative drive, people who have no genetic future, but who wring their hands over the race’s genetic future. Am I the only one who thinks that something is odd about that?
Am I the only one that thinks that if we try to understand this phenomenon, it might lead to a better understanding of why white nationalism in America is such a dysfunctional movement?
Sterile, ineffectual people who live in the past but do nothing in the present that affects the future may call themselves conservatives, but they don’t conserve anything, so they don’t deserve the name.
The past does not exist in another “place.” It exists in the here and now. And if it is conserved, it is conserved only in the future, by people who have the capacity to create a future.
The only real conservatives are vital, forward thinking, creative people. This is how I describe them in my article:
Are people who lack the drive to create a future for their own genes capable of creating a political future in which white people will exist? If you really care about our race, then you need to answer that question.
“WTF!?”
Sorry Matt. You made a reasonable argument about the viability of “holocaust” denial in White advocacy, but you didn’t stop there. You went on to assert that “it happened”.
In making that assertion, you make it obvious to anyone who has taken the pains to do critical research that you’re talking about something about which you haven’t done your homework.
Maybe you don’t have the time. Maybe you feel it’s a waste of energy. Those are valid arguments. But unless you’ve done a thorough review of the holocaust revisionist genre, you shouldn’t propagate a blood libel against your people.
If I’m wrong, post a bibliography of the revisionist literature you’ve digested.
Meanwhile, imagine how outraged you’d be if I asserted that the crimes of Jerry Pilan “happened” because the authorities have investigated them and found him to be guilty.
That’s too bad they PC-fied Jamestown. I went about 15-17 years ago when I was a teenager and it was really cool, just about the history of the founders without extra PC nonsense.
Greg,
I don’t know about you, but I fully intend to have children. Robert Campbell plans to have children. Jared Taylor has children. There are lots of White Nationalists here who either have children or plan to at some point in the future.
White Americans have less children than their ancestors for a number of reasons: modern birth control, abortion, an economy that is no longer based on agriculture, urbanization. Those are probably the most important.
Sterile, ineffectual people who live in the past – is this not an apt description of Oswald Spengler? Was there ever a bigger pessimist in Western history?
Your central point is well taken: White Americans lack the vital, life affirming attitude of their ancestors. In this respect, I fully agree. I said above that we need to recapture that attitude.
In fact, I have argued that such an attitude is sufficient to solve our racial problems. We don’t need an elaborate abstract philosophy to justify our each and every exertion as a race. Thinking in terms of these stupid abstractions is what got us into this mess in the first place.
The Virginia colonists didn’t need to read Martin Heidegger to justify putting down the Powhatan Indians. In our last exchange, I remember pointing out that the United States was created by armed backwoods frontiersmen, not Enlightenment philosophers.
I believe you accused me of being an anti-intellectual Southern populist!
“Fascism was included in the list because its lasting influence on the post-WW2 American racialist scene. Americans can’t help but look silly when they parade around in Nazi costumes.”
@Hunter Wallace
Fascism and NS are not the same. The difference is not just Germany/Italy. BM saw no problem in declaring that africans (colonies) were 100% Italian. The reason why the anti racist / marxist freak show pushed for the use of the word fascism was to avoid using national SOCIALISM.
As far as the article goes: racialism should not be reduced to biological materialism. Do that and you will end up with this low IQ Hollywood “NS” pony show.
White Americans have fewer children for all the reasons you list.
White Nationalists have fewer children than other white Americans for other reasons that we need to explore.
A tu quoque fallacy is not enough to dismiss Spengler’s points.
I did not accuse you of being an anti-intellectual Southern populist. I accused you of pretending to be one.
All societies are founded by unreflective barbarians. But unreflective barbarians don’t know that.
John Walters: “Racial preservation” is the wrong ideal – really vital races make lots of babies, regardless of whether they’re thinking about “racial preservation.”
This is incorrect. Vital races may indeed do this, and if they have the good fortune to enjoy reproductive isolation, then all is well. This is a luxury that we no longer possess. The world has grown smaller.
We must synthesize vitality with racial preservation, or we will become just another Brazilian or Mongolian cesspool. Were the Mongolian hordes not “vital” at one point? Were not the intrepid Portugese explorers? Look at them now (especially if you want to puke). Defile the blood and all is lost. To call that “vitality” is absurd.
Greg Johnson: “Am I the only one that thinks that if we try to understand this phenomenon, it might lead to a better understanding of why white nationalism in America is such a dysfunctional movement?”
Greg, I agree with you that this is worthy of further study, and I credited you as such in my post above. But equating racial preservation with mummification or death is utterly ridiculous. Yes, we have a problem. We have a huge problem. But tossing out the baby with the bathwater is not the solution to that problem. If we aren’t going to “preserve” the white tribes, why bother at all? What would be the point? Why shouldn’t we just say fuck it, get a slope girlfriend, and join the Republican Party? Is that enough vitality?
Racial preservation is the absolute, non-negotiable first order of business. Give up on that, and all is lost. The goal, as I said above, is to synthesize racial preservation with a vital white nationalism that can win. I respect and credited you for contributing to that process, but “vitalism” can’t come at the price of, ironically, giving up on ourselves – which is exactly what would happen if we took Spengler’s advice.
The circumstances of our people have changed greatly over the last few decades, driven by everything from technology, transportation, economics, and a thousand other things. When one looks at the rate of change over the course of the last century or two, it is truly amazing.
So what’s the uptake? So far, we haven’t adapted very well to these changed circumstances. That doesn’t mean that we never will. We’re in trouble, but we must adapt. The fact that we haven’t come up with a silver bullet yet is no reason to go into gloom and doom. We’re working on it. There are still many hundreds of millions of whites across the planet, we’re not going extinct just yet. If we take Spengler’s advice, we will – but not just yet. There is absolutely no reason to abandon “racial purism.” In fact, given the smaller world that we now inhabit, racial purism is more important than ever.
Two thousand years ago an isolated European village might have been able to absorb a swarthy peddler from the Levant, without changing their destiny or losing the European racial features that we value. Well, today it’s no longer just a stray camp follower of the Roman legions, but a tidal wave of mud. We either gain a sense of ourselves or we are going extinct. It’s just that simple. Earlier groups tended to enjoy reproductive isolation. We don’t. Part of our adaptation must therefore be to develop a stronger sense of racial purity.
To me, lacking a strong tribal affiliation is the very definition of decadence and the opposite of vitality. Spengler has turned the truth on its head. The person willing to breed and propagate with another tribe is repudiating the past and the future, all for a bit of pleasure in the present. Again, look at the results of these unions, and tell me that is not decadence incarnate. I submit the dumb, vapid, snarling faces of millions of mixed Mongolians, Puerto Ricans, and Mongolians as Exhibit A. Do I need to submit further proof?
RE Mark’s assertion:
I don’t have any racially mixed friends, at least that I know of.
I think that Spengler overstates the claim that all racial stocks have mixed in the past. That is obviously false.
I also don’t think that whites have anything to gain by mixing with other races.
But other races clearly have to gain from mixing with us. That is why they do it.
As for phenotypically white people who have some amount of non-white DNA, the Spenglerian attitude is to worry less about the mistakes their ancestors might have made than about the potential strengths they can contribute to the race we will become. I think that is reasonable.
Trainspotter writes:
I agree, but I think that we will not attain racial preservation merely as an end in itself.
It has to be attained as a necessary condition of a loftier goal. For me, that goal is Nietzschean: the creation of a perfected, god-like white race that will give meaning and purpose to this godless, meaningless universe.
Hunter: “In fact, I have argued that such an attitude is sufficient to solve our racial problems. We don’t need an elaborate abstract philosophy to justify our each and every exertion as a race. Thinking in terms of these stupid abstractions is what got us into this mess in the first place.”
That’s sort of like saying that a girl shouldn’t be attracted to the guy that, well, she is attracted to. She should like me instead. Well, it doesn’t work that way. If I don’t elicit attraction in her, but the other guy does, well, that’s where it’s at Wally Cat. If I can’t replace her feelings of attraction for him with feelings of attraction for me, I’m out of luck.
It is true that these “stupid abstractions” have, as you say, gotten us in this mess. But they are there, and either we defeat them and replace them with something better, or we’re out of luck. We’re not just talking about justifying our actions, either. We’re talking about everything, including motivating people to take a stand that would be inconceivable today. How else do we win?
As an aside, I think it misses the point to paint the conquerors of ages past as, more or less, mindless barbians. Perhaps some were, but in fact highly educated men, with their heads full of “stupid abstractions,” promoted the conquest of continents – many of our Founding Fathers amongst them. A mindless peon may well have put the bullet in the Indian savage’s skull, but there was much more to it than that. Man does not live by bread alone, his propensity for religion should be testament enough to that. Our problem is that we have failed to shape our worldview into something compelling enough to win. It’s that simple, and that complicated.
We either defeat these ideas, or they will defeat us. We either replace them philosophically, or they will replace us physically. There is no easy way around this, we can’t just wish them away.
My apologies for the ridiculous overuse of “well” above, and probably more problems that I’ve missed. That’s the price of writing when dead tired.
“I agree, but I think that we will not attain racial preservation merely as an end in itself.”
I too question the motive power of a purely materialist vision of life that can achieve racial preservation. I believe the faith impulse, one which the vast majority of Whites manifest, must be harnessed. The faithful indeed possess the vitality to move mountains.
“It has to be attained as a necessary condition of a loftier goal. For me, that goal is Nietzschean: the creation of a perfected, god-like white race that will give meaning and purpose to this godless, meaningless universe.”
Taken to its logical conclusion, this is not racialism, but transhumanism. What the hell, why not just build robots with attractive “white” exteriors and upload our “perfected” consciousnesses into them?
“Racial preservation is the absolute, non-negotiable first order of business. Give up on that, and all is lost.”
That depends upon what one ascribes ultimate value to. If the preservation of one’s race is one’s ultimate value, and indeed one’s race is not preserved, then “all is lost.” However, if one’s ultimate value is an exalted state of Man achieved through transcendent acts, and the preservation of the White race is not necessary to affect those transcendent acts, then “all” cannot said to be lost by the loss of one’s race. I see no reason that European-Asian-Jewish hybrids could not deliver the transhuman future; merely cognitive elitism could deliver the transhuman future.
A Godless Universe is only devoid of meaning which transcends the Universe.
A meaning of the World
Which lies outside the World.
And guess what?
A Godless Universe with tranhumans inside it would be just as devoid of transcendent meaning as a Godless Universe.
“Are you seriously claiming you did this [read all those friggin’ books]?”
Just because you don’t read a lot, Silver, doesn’t mean others don’t.
“It’s difficult to see how the intensity of racial beliefs that you require could again be developed, and especially difficult to see how, if developed, they could be applied indiscriminately to all racial others”
It’s difficult to see how all those Slavic-Turkic hybrids that populate the Balkans could go ape shit and start killing each other in light of their close racial similarity. But, you know, it did happen. I take it your overweening concern for policing the racist blogosphere for “racial revulsionists” is predicated upon your belief that you, and we all, are sitting on a potentially large powder keg. Ain’t that right, Silv?
I really liked this:
“This can be easily accomplished: Whites and non-Whites can be geographically separated, non-White immigration can be banned, the traditional American racial ideal can be promoted in all types of media, miscegenation can be outlawed, the tax code could be altered to encourage eugenic marriages, social services that deter family formation can be eliminated, etc.
If American culture and public policy was changed tomorrow, say, to reflect the White Nationalist racial idea, the United States would become more racially and culturally European over time, which is exactly what happened between Reconstruction and the the Civil Rights Movement. When JFK was elected president, America was almost 90% White; this happened by design, not by accident.”
but I think you misunderstand Mr. Johnsons intent — he was emphasizing the destiny and upward path of constant change in evolution i.e. where we are going. We could all do well to look there.
Things I don’t like about Spengler (or Yockey for that matter) is the old ideas of “cyclical” nature. These were dispelled by the modern scientific method and modern theories of evolution. I liked this part of your essay in regard to that:
“Oswald Spengler can be included in this category: Western Civilization is doomed, cultures go through life cycles, we are living in the terminal phase of civilization. I can’t think of a better prescription for helplessness and inaction than Spenglerian historical determinism.”
I feel exactly the same way — I feel that this is not only completely wrong, but a complete deflation of our upward biological path, DEFINITELY a prescription for helplessness and inaction viewed in this way. What I took from his essay was that we need to look at the ongoing process and where we are headed — our DESTINY is everything!
Other races are in a sort of self-created dead-end in evolution. ONLY the white race is moving somewhere, moving forward, has definitely a higher destiny we see in the cultures we create as much as in our mindset. Blacks can be seen as an evolutionary genocide-machine. Collectively they form a pattern which walls-out and destroys OUR pattern (or the oriental pattern etc. too). The Oriental pattern walls out OUR pattern (and the patterns of blacks). Our differet mindsets and cultures are different niches, niches formed by wars of genes and peoples and by extinctions and selections within our cultural trajectory.
Even if we mix with blacks, eventually their pattern will drag us down and eliminate our path and our destiny because of the enviroment they would create. Our genes they might carry for a while would be a disadvantage in Africa or Haiti, etc. and would be slowly eliminated. A little mixing with them would be MOST dangerous to us — because for our pattern we need to trust that we are on the same page, etc. Our pattern is higher, still emerging, and very delicate because of these factors. Mixing is death to US no matter how you look at it. Mixing is genocide for us. It can be argued that the black pattern is a genocide machine — what was left after countless inter-primate wars over millions of years.
We formed our pattern away from this machine, and maybe left in the first place because we saw we had no future there. Then we took another path, a definitely higher path. We self-selected and moved on. Mr. Johnsons essay does capture this spirit — the upward path, the saga that is ongoing. We need a mythos of the 21st century to guide us.
I don’t think that Mr. Johnson and you are saying anything that much different. He was finding the good parts in what these earlier writers were saying and translating them for us. that is my take on it at least.
I think the reason ‘white nationalists’ appear to have less children is because most people involved in white nationalist activism don’t have families, usually males in their mid teens through mid 30s. It’s much more difficult to be involved in such things when one has a family to worry about. I know of many people who used to be skinheads or otherwise involved in WN, but dropped out because they’d rather just concentrate on raising their families. Also, I know a number of racialist individuals with families who wouldn’t touch anything WN related with a 10 foot pole because they think it’s full of bizzaro types. A fair number of WNs do have large families though, especially the Christian types it seems.
“A Godless Universe with tranhumans inside it would be just as devoid of transcendent meaning as a Godless Universe.”
Truly, that one believes a thing to be true, does not make it true. But, if one believes a thing to be true, then one perceives it as being true – and one presumably acts accordingly. It is Johnson’s contention that if a critical mass of Whites were to sincerely adopt his faith – or at least what he professes to be his faith – then the necessary behavior, the requisite “vitality,” would manifest in those individuals to secure the genetic continuity of the race. That is until the transhumans march onto the scene.
It is Johnson’s contention that if a critical mass of Whites were to sincerely adopt his faith – or at least what he professes to be his faith – then the necessary behavior, the requisite “vitality,” would manifest in those individuals to secure the genetic continuity of the race.
I highly doubt it would, and how’s he going to get that to happen anyways?
I have yet to see the issue raised in the first comment on this article to be addressed.
Well, Uncle Adolf did say the abstractions of volkishness needed to be concretized into articles of faith so the lemmings could grasp and be motivated to act on them. I think he was right. Could be as simple as repackaging NS so as not to offend the Pavlovian aversion to said that has been inculcated in the lemmings.
People die. Spengler’s point is that civilizations die too. That’s life. Calling it “determinism” just clouds the issue. Free or determined, we are mortal.
Just as normal individuals are not reduced to “helplessness and inaction” by the fact that they are mortal, neither does that attitude follow from the discovery that one’s civilization is mortal. Instead, it should encourage us to “make hay while the sun shines.”
Spengler held the old Aryan duty ethic: If x is your duty, you are obligated to do it, regardless of whether the times and circumstances are conducive to happy endings.