Oswald Spengler, 1880–1936
3,131 words
“Those who talk too much about race no longer have it in them.” —Oswald Spengler
Recently I spent a good deal of time re-reading the great Oswald Spengler: for general enlightenment, but also with an eye to criticizing his teachings about race, which seemed at first reading confused, bizarre, and dangerous. Much to my surprise, however, I have come to see much sense and truth in Spengler’s views.
Biological Race
Although Spengler speaks dismissively of Darwinism, he does not deny that race is a biological phenomenon. For Spengler, races are extended families, people who share the same “blood” (i.e., genes). Spengler even speaks of a race as a vast collective body of individuals through which the same genes circulate.
But Spengler denies that biology is all there is to race. Race, it turns out, has both psychological and cultural aspects as well.
Like Darwinists, Spengler believes that biological races are mutable. They change over time. According to Spengler, the principal force that shapes races is “landscape,” i.e., environment. This is consistent with the biological view that a distinct race emerges when a human population is isolated and subjected to unique environmental conditions. These conditions select for certain genetic variations. These variations then spread throughout the entire population through inbreeding. (If there are barriers to breeding between different parts of the population, then multiple new races or subraces will emerge.)
Where Spengler departs from sound biology is his belief that landscape can shape a population independent of genetic change, and that different races, when placed in the same landscape, will converge in their traits without genetic blending. Spengler even refers to Franz Boas’s false and probably fraudulent claims that in America, the offspring of different European racial stocks had convergent biological traits that were products of environment alone. But none of Spengler’s conclusions about race depend on these false assumptions, which can be excised without changing his overall viewpoint.
Psychological Race
What is “psychological” race? Spengler often speaks of “having race” and being “of race.” But having race is not merely having certain genes. It is a matter of having a certain feeling: a primitive, vital urge to propagate oneself. It is the drive to immortalize oneself through one’s progeny. In The Hour of Decision, Spengler writes:
A woman of race does not desire to be a “companion” or a “lover,” but a mother; and not the mother of one child, to serve as a toy and distraction, but of many: the instinct of a strong race speaks in the pride that large families inspire, in the feeling that barrenness is the hardest curse that can befall a woman and through her the race. Out of this instinct arises the primitive jealousy which leads one woman to take away from another the man whom she covets as the father of her children. The more intellectual jealousy of the great cities . . . betrays the waning of the race urge to permanence; and that instinct for permanence cannot be reawakened by speeches and writing. . . . A man wants stout sons who will perpetuate his name and his deeds beyond his death into the future and enhance them, just as he has done himself through feeling himself heir to the calling and works of his ancestors. That is the Nordic idea of immortality. These peoples have known no other and desired none. It is the source of that tremendous yearning for fame, the wish to live on among posterity through one’s work, to see one’s name perpetuated on monuments or at the least held in honourable memory. (Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision, Part One: Germany and World-Historical Evolution, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934], 220–21)
This feeling of race is not “racial consciousness,” i.e., awareness of belonging to a certain race. The feeling of race is forward-looking. Racial consciousness is backwards-looking. The feeling of race impels us to create new life. Racial consciousness is merely awareness of life that has already been created, the life handed down to us. The feeling of race is the stirring of the same creative force in ourselves.
Race and Culture
How, then, is race also “cultural”? If a race is a collective body that exists and propagates itself through individual bodies, a culture is a collective mind that exists in and through individual minds, propagating itself by means of language.
Race shapes and limits culture. But once culture arises, it turns back on and reshapes its racial substratum in the light of ideas that are not dictated by biology. These ideas include conceptions of beauty and fitness that guide mate selection, myths and religious beliefs that regulate sexual behavior, moral ideals that promote the propagation of certain types, etc.
Cultural selection may be eugenic, dysgenic, or both, but if exercised over a long enough period of time, it can produce human populations as varied as different breeds of dog.
Race Change
Spengler puts great stock in the mutability of races.
He denies what might be called “race Platonism,” namely the idea that races are immutable kinds that are more or less well-instantiated by particular individuals. For Spengler, a race is just a collection of individuals with common blood. If a race can be likened to a collective organism, this organism does not exist over and above its individual members. Instead it exists only in and through them.
Spengler also denies what can be called “race Traditionalism,” the idea that in the distant past, a godlike super-race existed, which has since declined because of miscegenation with inferior races or spiritual transgressions or both.
Race Platonism sees every concrete, living organism as an imperfect reflection of its ideal archetype. Race Traditionalism sees all change as degeneration. Both views see change as metaphysically inferior to timeless perfection, and the Traditionalists think that as time rolls on, things usually go from bad to worse.
But if race Platonism and race Traditionalism are false, then change is not necessarily a bad thing. Life is constant change, and stasis—even frozen perfection—is death.
Meet the folks
In Spengler’s view, a race just is a constantly changing group of individuals who share the same genetic traits at any given point in time. But these traits are not timeless and permanent either. (That would be just a sneaky, immanent form of Platonism, i.e., Aristotelianism.) Genetic traits also change over time. This means that if we go far enough back in our family trees, we will find people quite unlike ourselves.
The unity of a race, therefore, is ultimately not defined by the persistence of something that remains unchanged in time, but merely the continuity of an ever-changing process, one of the strands of the ever-changing process that is nature itself.
Race Preservation?
What is race preservation? Most race preservationists will answer that it consists of maintaining a certain set of genes. This is, for instance, the core of Frank Salter’s concept of Ethnic Genetic Interests.
But if Spengler’s view of race is correct, then this is tantamount to the demand that time stop. It is tantamount to taking a snapshot of a moving process and demanding that no further change take place.
Yet if a race is a constantly changing collective organism, then the demand to “preserve” it at a certain arbitrarily chosen moment is actually the demand to kill it. It is analogous to “preserving” a bird at the height of its beauty—by shooting it and taking it to the taxidermist.
Every generation of a race is shaped in part by the conscious and unconscious choices of its forbears. Each new generation will be slightly different, and when we compare our remote ancestors and our remote descendants, they will hardly resemble one another.
Meet the grand-kids: the Talosians from Star Trek, “The Menagerie”
At one end of the family tree, there will be the ape-like primitives of 2001: A Space Odyssey. At the other end, there might be something like the macro-cephalic, telepathic “butt heads” of the original Star Trek series. But they will still be “one” race, one extended family.
Allowing that story to unfold is the only genuine form of race preservation that is possible.
The false race preservationist, however, decides that his generation—or some previous generation—is the “right” generation to preserve. Then he seeks to hold onto—or “get back” to—a particular genetic snapshot or cross-section of the race’s life.
All generations before that point were not just shaped by previous generations, they also shaped subsequent generations. But the race preservationist decides that from a certain point on, every generation will be made by previous generations. But they will not be allowed to make future generations in their turn. They will no longer be agents of change, but merely agents of preservation.
Who are they to change anything?
Racial Purism as Decadence
Spengler regards such a mindset as decadent. Consider the following passage from The Hour of Decision:
. . . in speaking of race, it is not intended in the sense in which it is the fashion among anti-Semites in Europe and America to use it today: Darwinistically, materially. Race purity is a grotesque word in view of the fact that for centuries all stocks and species have been mixed, and that warlike—that is, healthy—generations with a future before them have from time immemorial always welcomed a stranger into the family if he had “race,” to whatever race it was he belonged. Those who talk too much about race no longer have it in them. What is needed is not a pure race, but a strong one, which has a nation within it.
This manifests itself above all in self-evident elemental fecundity, in an abundance of children, which historical life can consume without ever exhausting the supply. God is, in the familiar words of Frederick the Great, always on the side of the big battalions, and now if ever this shows itself. The millions who fell in the World War were the pick of all the white world had in the way of race, but the test of race is the speed with which it can replace itself. A Russian once said to me: “The Russian woman will make good in ten years what we sacrificed in the Revolution.” That is the right instinct. Such races are irresistible. (The Hour of Decision, 219–20)
Following Nietzsche, Spengler holds that positive values and a healthy culture are the products of “ascending life.” Negative values and a decadent culture are products of declining life.
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844–1900
Ascending life is active, conscious of what it can do, of its power to change the future. Declining life is passive, conscious of what has been done to it and cannot be undone.
Ascending life is vital and life-giving. Declining life is devitalized and devitalizing.
Ascending life is forward-looking and hopeful; it creates and embraces change; it pursues gain rather than avoids loss; it is motivated by love and passion, not fear; it is warlike, willing to risk life for higher gains.
Declining life is backwards-looking, fearful of the future, fearful of change, fearful of loss, fearful of risk and conflict, conservative, stinking of senility, hemmed by shrinking horizons, chilled by looming death.
Ascending life is aware of the past, but selectively so: it remembers what is empowering and forgets what is not. When the past becomes restrictive, it sloughs it off like a snake discards an old skin.
Declining life is less selective. It has a long memory, brooding over old mistakes and picking at old wounds. Declining life is defined by the past, which it carries as an ever-growing burden, like a snail adding to its lifeless shell even as its living substance wanes, until finally it is crushed under the dead weight.
According to Spengler, when the healthy man thinks of race, he is less concerned with the race we have been than the race we will become. He may feel grateful to his ancestors for the positive gifts—the strengths—they have bequeathed him. He gives no thought to their mistakes and imperfections, even those that mark him. It is enough to be aware that they were not perfect, that there is room for improvement. And a healthy man thinks that he can make improvements. He thinks that he can bequeath more to his progeny than his ancestors bequeathed to him.
Thus the healthy man “of race” is not concerned with racial purity—defined as the preservation of a certain set of gene frequencies, whether his own or his ancestors’. He is pleased with the good traits he has received, and he would like to pass them on. But, as Spengler says, he is more concerned with strong sons than pure ones, and he would not hesitate to breed with an outsider if he thought this would improve his progeny.
For Spengler, a concern with racial purity is a sign of racial decadence, of a lack of racial vitality. The racial purist looks to the past, not the future, because he does not have the vitality in him necessary to create a future. He is defined by the past and feels that he does not have the power or the right to change it, only to repeat it (or talk about repeating it, and urge others to repeat it).
As Spengler writes, “Those who talk too much about race no longer have it in them.” This means that the people who talk the most about reproduction do it the least. And, Spengler might add, that is a good thing. Let the sapless branches rattle in the wind all they want, as long as they spare us their shriveled fruit.
White Nationalism: A Degenerate Movement?
Racial purists often claim that their intellectual opposition to miscegenation is merely a healthy “instinct.” They also claim that there is something biologically sick about the instincts of miscegenators.
Spengler thinks that the exact opposite is true. He would predict that those who intellectually oppose miscegenation and advocate racial purity and preservation would be, on average, less virile, less fecund, and less mentally and physically healthy than the average person, including the average miscegenator.
Based on ten years of experience in the American white nationalist movement, I have to say that Spengler’s prediction is absolutely correct. White nationalism in America is an overwhelmingly degenerate movement, and I do not exempt myself from this judgment.
But what does this mean, exactly? It means merely that, from the point of view of biological vitality, a white man who preaches racial purity but has no children is less healthy than a white man who chooses to have children with a non-white woman.
It does not mean that the white nationalist is wrong in his convictions about biology and politics. It does not mean that, from a eugenic point of view, whites have anything to gain from mixing with other races. (As a matter of fact, I think we do not.)
Decadent people can be right, and healthy people can be wrong.
But there is a lot more to politics than simply being right.
And from the point of view of practical politics, we white nationalists need to take a good hard look at ourselves. Can such a degenerate movement win?
Should it win? For the sake of all that is holy, shouldn’t we want to keep nostalgia-addled kooks away from any power over the future of life, lest they murder and mummify the race in their quest to preserve its purity?
Vitalizing White Nationalism?
What would a vital white nationalism look like?
This is where Spengler’s views of how culture shapes race come in. I also take inspiration from Michael O’Meara’s essays on myth and politics in his Toward the White Republic and Alex Kurtagic’s “Learning from the Right” and related essays.
White nationalists love sobering facts, so let’s begin with one. 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.
Present-day white nationalism is conservative: backward looking, devitalized, decadent, and gloomy. Star Trek is progressive: forward-looking, optimistic, and hopeful. (Nauseatingly so.)
With this in mind, ask yourself who is more likely to preserve the white race: (1) the present white nationalist movement, or (2) a group of kooks who, taking Tolkien as their bible, decide that through eugenics, they are going to mold every successive generation of their progeny closer to the archetype of the elves: the fairest and wisest race?
The elves have it. Why? Because, kooky though it may be, creating a race of elves far better captures the imagination and mobilizes human vitality than dark predictions about the rising tide of color.
A vital white nationalist movement would be a utopian, progressivist, eugenicist mythical-cultural phenomenon. It would not be founded on empirical studies of how race influences culture. It would not propagate itself through academic conferences and policy studies. It would be founded on a grand culture-creating, race-shaping myth, propagated through art and religion, that enthralls and mobilizes a whole people. (No, I don’t have one handy.)
It would be less concerned about the race we were or the race we are than about the race we can become. It would not brood over whether the Finns or Armenians or Sicilians are white enough. It would not obsess over the odd Jew or Amerindian in someone’s ancestry, as long as he or she makes a net contribution to the coming race. (No, this is not special pleading on my part.) Besides, eventually, we will be able to just edit out undesirable genetic code, although I hope we will be more concerned with the perfections we can write in.
Most importantly, a vital white nationalist movement should require its leaders to lead by example, by marrying wisely and fruitfully. No, the movement should not and cannot turn away talented people who have the misfortune of being unwilling or unable to reproduce. But the movement should definitely have a hierarchy, and anyone who wants to rise to the top needs to do more than talk about a future for white children. He needs to contribute white children to the future.
From The Occidental Observer, July 10, 2010
28 Comments
White Nationalism: A Degenerate Movement?
Excellent!
Vitalizing White Nationalism?
Good!
The race we were, the race we are, the race we may become.
Ever read Brian Aldiss’ Helliconian Trilogy? You should. Don’t obsess over the lazy, liberal, anti-technology “unthinkers” back on Earth in the second half of the third volume. Or the “Great Families” and Pudendolls on the observation station, Avernus. Aldiss’ political philosophy is pure liberal decadence and these subplots are minor, at best, and boring. The real story concerns the interplay between the binary star system and the Helico Virus, the battle between Man and Phagor for dominance, conflicting Helliconian belief systems – the wheel of life on Helliconia. I equate contemporary White nationalist thinking to the fixed, ancestor-worshipping, “eotemporal minds” of Phagors.
If some or most Elvist followers of Tolkien seem kooky, Elvism is not. Elves are not a bad example of the race that Whites could become (or the heirs of some of us, anyway). I’m certainly not opposed to trying it. Our race is closer to the Elf “ideal” in appearance and behavior.
There is advantage in the fact that this idea, “the race we may become,” works for all races of Man. It won’t fool or handicap the enemy, however. The enemy says all gentiles on the farm are equal; therefore, all he needs do is loudly and publicly redefine our “Elvish Ideal” to include chocolate and butterscotch Elves with Caucasoid features. Thus Elvism becomes integrated and Vanilla Elves remain suspected “Nazis” until “proven innocent” by grand acts of treason. Of course, as we all know, this too is a sham. Due to his skin color the Vanilla Elf is always suspect. Thus the battle continues.
Yet…
In real life most chocolate and butterscotch Elves won’t fit the Elvish ideal and Elvism could, possibly, remain an implicitly White activity.
Have you seen the Rammstein music video “Stripped”? Watch it here: http://www.esnips.com/doc/ad2022e0-508d-4282-b05d-66d8ace6561d . My sons turned me on to it. Forget Till Lindemann’s singing ability, the message and video collage from Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia are beautiful. This music video or the idea behind it could be made to work with Elvism, in my opinion.
I am not arguing for the pursuit of racial preservation through “implictly” white activities. I am arguing that racial preservation is best pursued merely as a necessary condition of a loftier project of racial enhancement, and racial enhancement can and should be quite explicit about its aims and necessarily discriminatory means.
Great video. No need to apologize to me for the singing. I am a Laibach fanatic, after all.
Spengler had a very interesting view on race.
As far as what you seek for a “vital White Nationalist movement” I do not think it is achievable within and under the banner of “White Nationalism”
You are probably right. There has to be more to it than just biological race and race preservation. The preservation of the white race will come as a consequence of a new cultural/spiritual/religious consciousness.
The meaning of the word “race” in German, at least in Spengler’s days, has connotations beyond genetic or ethnic significance. Spengler wrote somewhere else (I have to paraphrase here): “Rasse bedeutet in Form sein, sonst nichts.”- Now “in Form sein” means “having a shape” as well as “being fit” ( as a well trained athlete before the tournament). So Spengler’s statement would be translated as: “Race means being in good shape, nothing else.”
(From this p.o.v one could argue that certain race mixings produce good results – f.e. slavic and germanic- and others not-so-good or rather negative ones.)
Certainly Spengler would have regarded the act of mere preservation as defensive only, and therefore decadent. The priority would be not so much to “preserve” the “white race(s)”, but rather what they should actually DO to deserve to be called “great” again. Decadent peoples ask: “What will happen to us?” instead of “What shall we do?” Once self-preservation or self-defense is up for discussion, as is the case with white people today, the damage is probably irreparable. In fact, decadence precedes these questions.
To this I disagree:
“But the movement should definitely have a hierarchy, and anyone who wants to rise to the top needs to do more than talk about a future for white children.”
Those that reproduce the most do not necessarily make up for the best thinkers or leaders, often on the contrary – as history proves.
Thanks for your comments.
Of course “those that reproduce the most” are not necessarily “the best thinkers or leaders.” But any race that is serious about its future should, when evaluating those who are fit for leadership roles, give precedence to those who have race “in” them: those who have demonstrated a concrete faith in the future of the race by actually perpetuating their own blood.
Well, but one childless, though great and dedicated leader can achieve far more for the future of a people than countless reproducing others.
As my views on Hitler are overwhelmingly negative I won’t really point him out here, though he is an example that comes to mind immediately. Note that Spengler’s “Those who talk too much about race…” in fact targeted mostly the NS elites which were taking power by the time “Hour of Decision” was written. The whole passage above can be read as a correction and critique of NS race doctrine. As always Spengler’s warnings were right. Hitler’s dated 19th century race concepts made him do the wrong decisions in the occupied Soviet Union.
The reason white nationalism is ineffectual in preserving the Nordic race is that it is weak from disease, infected with the Christian religion.
Greg,
Superb. It might not be possible to improve on your concluding paragraph. I guess I only have one question.
Is part of our Race Shaping Myth going to be a return to mid-wives, home child birth and the accompanying elevated rates of still born children and mothers dying in child birth? These desperate heroic scenes of Spengler’s “Woman of Race” will fit in perfectly with the King Arthur inspired swords and sorcery imagery.
We can even combine Spartan stoicism with primitive Church martyrdom as our Valkyrie type Women of Race endure this while being taxed to provide Medicaid and advanced medical facilities to non-white women for their childbirths.
But if this is not the plan, or if it emerge the 50% of the race required to execute these desperate exploits generally decline, then we’re drawing some lines on how far the Race Shaping Myth intrudes into reality. Now we need to discuss what happens when HCA & attending doctors present a $50,000 bill for a c-section and 4 days’ stay. “Have I got a grand cosmos shaping myth for you” is not going to satisfy them.
Maguire
p.s. I’ve noticed that among themselves “White Women” frequently talk about the subsequent costs of raising as well as the costs of child birth. This might be a feminine expression of that “foresight” various racialist writers sometimes ascribe to northern European genetic lines.
Thanks for your comments. There is a big gap between foundational myths and practical politics. Prudence and common sense are what bridge them. Christians do not consult the Bible when discussing where to put traffic lights. I do not look at a map of California when deciding where to plant a shrub in my garden. Affordable family formation and all that implies RE health care, education, etc. should be part of any society that puts its vital interests first. One does not need to look too hard to find examples of white societies that encouraged large families and provided all the necessary benefits.
As the father of midwife-delivered children and grandfather of three more, I caution you to not so smoothly equate the current social norms concerning childbirth (it is not a disease, you know), together with the facile claims that such norms represent “progress”, with a healthy approach to the issues involved.
I liked your essay and feel that it is more or less in harmony what I have been trying to do.
The Ecumenical Universal asks the question, do our actions further our own evolution and development in the best way without seriously harming others. Or another way of saying it, do our actions further the evolution and development of other people without harming our own development? An obscure book by Tomotom Siftung called “Pro Evo: Pro Evolution – Guideline for an Age of Joy” makes a clear affirmation of this concept.
Since all the Kosmos seeks to evolve, not just us, not just one people, one race, one state, evolution is seen as a universal drive, so anti-evolutionary actions can hurt the whole network of evolving objects.
This is why we affirm the right of all people, all states to evolve. Helping one can help all. And this obviously relates to our actions toward the natural environment and its evolution and development.
This is also why we need separate, virtually independent, racial or ethnic states, within a light evolutionary federation protecting the evolution of the whole. Imperial racial, religious or political selfishness of one against the many harm this evolution and development
Top notch article, as always.
I believe Spengler wrote these thoughts as a later reaction to the Nazi movement, or at least to what it ultimately became. He supported the Nazis in their earliest incarnation, but clearly differs with their obsessions about absolute racial purity, e.g. defacing the grave of Johann Strauss because he may have had 1/8 Jewish ancestry, firing professors of 1/4 Jewish ancestry, etc. And absolute racial purity is not a worthwhile objective for eugenicist thinkers. It’s not about purity of race, but quality. Certain groups, such as Ashkenazi Jews, east Asians, and certain Asian Indians actually have higher average IQs than whites, at least in some catagories. A splattering of their genes might even help our cause. Groups with low average IQs, blacks and Hispanics particularly, are to be avoided at all costs. Even if an individual has a marginally high IQ, the gene pool gets slammed on the offspring, when regression to the mean kicks in. Understanding Human History by Michael Hart has some important musing on the “dilutional effect”, the phenomena of good genes being diluted by an influx of inferior genes.
Jews themselves have a powerful sense of “race”, in the sense of Spengler, at this nexus in history. And no group has been more attentive to eugenics than they. I am constantly astounded by how much the German academic and scholar communities were inbred with Jews, prior to 1930s. It’s hard to find a German Nobel Laureate in medicine or physics who did not have a Jewish wife. Note the number of great song writers who have been married to Jewesses: Paul McCartney, Woody Guthrie, Kurt Cobain, Brian Wilson. Curious, eh? The Jewish gene pool is like the Borg–“we will add you to our collective”–if you are good enough! There are no blacks, Hispanics, nor any group below a certain meridian on that list. So not pure, but always GOOD. These choices of fathers also give one a sense of the qualities that Jewish women seek in a potential father, in Spengler’s sense.
A couple of points:
1) The Nazis were not absolute racial purists.
2) I think that you are exaggerating about the numbers of accomplished Germans with Jewish ancestry. I would like to see lists.
3) Having a Jewish wife is not the same as having Jewish ancestry.
4) Jews are prominent in the entertainment business, so it makes sense that whites in that business are more likely to marry Jews.
5) I agree that for all their physical and mental debilities, Jews have more racial vitality than whites. Yes, it makes perfect sense for Courtney Love to want Kurt Cobain’s genes in her child.
Mental debilities? Don’t you think Jews are, on average, higher in IQ than white Europeans? I agree that they seem to lag in certain areas, for example, the visual arts, but that may be more a question of temperment. There aren’t many Jewish farmers either, which is clearly a case of temperment.
German academics with Jewish ancestry: Gerhard Hertzberg, Goepart-Mayer, Niels Bohr(Danish), Ernst Mach was Wolfgang Pauli’s grandfather(a Jew with German ancestry). I’m not knocking German achievement by a long shot. I’m just trying to point out that Jews, who are seen as valueing racial purity, will readily interbreed with distinguished non-Jews. Ergo, miscegenation is at least more permissible with talented groups. It’s low IQ groups who should be avoided–again, for strictly genetic reasons, not because of some metaphysical “hatred”. For this reason, the old miscegenation laws in the American South made a lot more sense than the Nazi Nuremberg laws against intermarrying with Jews.
Jews have a high propensity to mental illness.
“Jews have a high propensity to mental illness.”
True. Americans will be pleased to know that their nation is being run in to the ground by a bunch of Jewish maniacs.
“Will Insanity Consume the Jewish Race?” – http://www.henriettesherbal.com/eclectic/journals/nemaq1915/02-jews.html
“Among the Jews the proportion of insane has been observed to be very large. From statistics collected by Buschan he concludes that they are four to six times more liable to mental disease than are non-Jews. Lombroso quotes Servi (“Gli Israeliti di Europa,” 1872) to the effect that in Italy there is one insane among 391 Jews, nearly four times as many as among the Catholic population of that country. Verga (“Archivio di Statistico,” 1880) shows that in 1870 there was one insane among 1,775 Catholics in Italy, while with the Jews it reached the alarming proportion of one insane in 384 of population. A similar phenomenon has been observed in other countries. In the various provinces of Germany and also in Denmark the percentage of Jewish insane is very large, as is seen from the figures in the appended table. … In this table the proportion of Jewish, insane is in nearly all places very large, in some cases more than double that of the non-Jewish population.” – http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=149&letter=I#ixzz0tR7AYwCY
This a superb essay.
Against the purists, however, one point needs to be stressed. Spengler’s position (like that of his student, Francis Parker Yockey) was not a call for race mixing, as it occurs in the US today. The thought of Europeans reproducing with Negroes or Orientals was abhorrent to him. His “races,” in the sense that Greg refers to them in his essay, are the various European nations and it’s their mixture (like the German and Slav tribes which created the Prussians) that he thinks has the potential to enhance a given “race” or nation.
This, incidentally, is the position of that great Darwinian anthropologist, Sir Arthur Keith.
This paragraph describes me perfectly:
“According to Spengler, when the healthy man thinks of race, he is less concerned with the race we have been than the race we will become. He may feel grateful to his ancestors for the positive gifts-the strengths-they have bequeathed him. He gives no thought to their mistakes and imperfections, even those that mark him. It is enough to be aware that they were not perfect, that there is room for improvement. And a healthy man thinks that he can make improvements. He thinks that he can bequeath more to his progeny than his ancestors bequeathed to him.”
I have even said that a little mixing we can handle — it is the wholesale mixing that knocks us off the path both culturally and genetically, leading us to make wrong choices and head in the wrong direction, that is the bad thing. I have often said that if any person of another race wishes to help us in saving ourselves toward our task of building the future race, then they are welcome. It is where we are headed, it is about DESTINY. It is a religious feeling about the afterlife of our progeny.
From your article, what we apparently need is a myth of the 21st century to guide us. A religion. To me, race IS religion. Real, here and now, heaven on Earth stuff.
I strongly agree with the notion that child-bearing is by far the most important element of the future of any population.
I remember hearing that J.S. Mill suffered a nervous break-down that was occasioned by the realization that if all of his ambitions were satisfied, if he achieved everything he was working toward, he still would not be content. I suspect the same is true for most “white nationalists”
What good would it do if racial purity or racial excellence were achieved? Is this really a goal that we can or should aim for? From what perspective? This, I think, is where the Platonism and traditionalism come in. What’s the alternative? I don’t think there is one. If you want to hit the target you have to see it. All of this talk of evolution seems to miss this point. The goals of evolution, if there are such, are invisible to us, except perhaps in hindsight.
It is one thing to say that our actions are, in some regards and to some extent guided by subconscious drives that tend to preserve the species or race. It is quite another to then turn around and praise these actions on that basis and attempt to make them conscious goals. It makes sense, for example, that men find attractive feminine traits that, it so happens, are good signs that a women can bear children easily and care for them. I find it perverse that a man should choose a good breeder. It makes more sense that he should choose her because of her physical and moral beauty (and I think it is crudely reductionist to say that beauty is the same as breeding excellence). If his character has been well-formed then he will choose suitably, if not, will reflecting on the benefits to the race really help? It would be quite a perverse race whose members were consciously motivated by the racial consequences of their actions.
Great, thoughtful essay. Many thanks. It has provoked good comments as well. We will be dealing with these issues for a long time.
One rather trivial question: are you sure your first photo is actually of Spengler? It looks a lot like Gabriele d’Annunzio.
If it is Spengler, at what age?
I wondered about the photo too, but it is all over the web as the young Oswald Spengler, so I used it rather than the old, bald Spengler. It seemed more appropriate given the topic of the essay.
Good essay, but you seem to be arguing for quantity over quality here Dr Johnson.
The Europid race – especially the Nords of Northern Europe – is one of quality, not quantity. As you drift further and further away from the Nords you will notice how they value quantity over quality. Throughout history, and now in modern America too we see the slow, carefully breeding quality Northern Euros being swamped and displaced by the quantity breeders of many different races.
The Europid race – especially the Nords – are about quality: 1 kid, 2 kids, maybe 3, but all of them are very well taken care in most cases, and the majority of them are distinctly above average. Again, Northern Europeans tend to be very slow and careful breeders.
However, the main problem arises when the much more prolific quantity focused races began to encroach upon the territory of the Nords, as all prolific groups need to expand in to fresh territory so that they can continue to breed. Hence we have the invasion of Western nations by the non-White prolific breeders in their quest for more breeding space, and this has only accelerated by the rise of modernity with globalization, the constant flow of labor, and so on.
The real dilemma is between quality and quantity, and also in permanently preserving as much living space as possible for the posterity of Northern Europeans.
“Thus proliferation is concentrated in the lower social classes and in the inferior races where the animal-like impulses is stronger than any rational calculation and consideration. The unavoidable effects are a reversed selection and the ascent and onslaught of inferior elements against which the “race” of the superior castes and people, now exhausted and defeated, can do very little as a spiritually dominating element.” – Evola from REVOLT AGAINST THE MODERN WORLD, Chapter 21: also read first paragraph of that chapter
Great point about dwelling on the past. The forces of anti-whiteness like to dwell on the past. Mental health therapists help people who dwell on the past to move forward. The forces of anti-whiteness constantly apply guilt on white people for historic crimes (either real or imagined) for the purpose of demoralization. This is the exact opposite of what one should do if one wants to produce healthy adjusted people.
Our anti-white society deals with the past in a way 100% opposite of what a mental health professional does. Imagine if a psychologist used the same model as our entertainment, educational, and news systems for addressing the past?
This psychologist would remind the patient during every sitting of the wrong they did in the world (along with inventing wrongs that never happened) and reinforce the idea that the patient is immoral and deficient. They would never point out the positive aspects of the patient and would insist that anything the patient did accomplish is the result of theft or privilege.
Our media, entertainment, and news systems dwell on the past for the purpose of creating unhealthy people. This is not an accident. If the people running your entertainment, educational, and news system create an atmosphere of guilt (for whites) and resentment (for non-whites), then the wrong people are running these systems.
White advocates must be future oriented and optimistic. White advocates are the therapists of the white world.
A vital white nationalist movement would be a utopian, progressivist, eugenicist mythical-cultural phenomenon. It would not be founded on empirical studies of how race influences culture.
There is necessity for both. The Marxists understood this. They wrote economic treatises yet also created propaganda posters and films. The former creates intellectual legitimacy while the latter creates emotional legitimacy. If you give up on race being a more-or-less scientifically defined boundary then you will follow the path of Marxists and become “cultural racialists.” “Everyone can be a member of our race if they simply agree with our ideas.” Slippery slopes aren’t just for water-parks, you know.
“It would not brood over whether the Finns or Armenians or Sicilians are white enough. It would not obsess over the odd Jew or Amerindian in someone’s ancestry, as long as he or she makes a net contribution to the coming race. (No, this is not special pleading on my part.)” (Greg Johnson)
Fair point. I would also recommended that you include a vision for non-whites in the grand narrative.
Essentially WN or White advocacy is about creating a space (or spaces) where “Whites” would be free to pursue a way of life that best allows them to meet & exceed their potential as individuals and as members of a community. Whites have a right to live within their own aesthetic, political, behavioral, social, legal, intellectual, and spiritual preferences.
The question is, how will this help the non-whites? This will have to be addressed.
I think about it like this: White people have a belief in the infinite. White people will never stop trying to lift up the developing world. As whites build their own communities that bring out the potential of their people, they’ll be able to teach other communities how to do the same.
Your best essay yet…and your most important. Your Spengler-inspired essay combines idealism with the practicality that are the necessary ingredients to any movement having a chance for success in the real world.