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Multiculturalism and the Racialization of Politics in the United States

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This is a recent talk which was intended as a  general overview and designed to appeal to the unconverted.

My background is in evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychologists study how the human mind has been shaped by the needs of survival and reproduction over long expanses of evolutionary time. When we look at how the human mind actually evolved, there are troubling implications for multiculturalism.

Social Identity Processes

There are several systems that are relevant for how people respond to others from different groups, but I think the most important one stems from social identity theory. An early form of social identity theory was stated by 19th-century anthropologist William Graham Sumner, who concluded:

Loyalty to the group, sacrifice for it, hatred and contempt for outsiders, brotherhood within, warlikeness without—all grow together, common products of the same situation. It is sanctified by connection with religion. Men of an others-group are outsiders with whose ancestors the ancestors of the we-group waged war. . . . Each group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior, exalts its own divinities, and looks with contempt on outsiders. Each group thinks its own folkways the only right ones, and if it observes that other groups have other folkways, these excite its scorn.

This essentially states that for humans, identifying as a member of an ingroup is a source of conflict with other groups. We are all aware that around the world there are many countries that are engulfed in conflict stemming from religious and ethnic differences—from different social identities. Right now the civil war in Syria is a good example, pitting Sunnis against Shiites, and within these larger groupings there are particular ethnic groups, such as Alewites, Arabs, Kurds, Druze, and Assyrians. Azerbaijan is no stranger to ethnic conflict, as in the war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh. Read more

On Identity

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The following is a speech by Alain de Benoist at the NPI conference at The Ronald Reagan Building, Washington DC, October 26, 2013, translated from the French by Tom Sunic

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Before I start off with my speech, I would like to apologize for having an obligation to inflict some pain on you! Listening to a speech in the English language with a French accent, as awful as mine, may indeed turn out to be a kind of torture for you. But rest assured:  I’m much better in French!

As you can guess, the subject of my speech is the notion of identity.

In a famous passage from his Confessions, Saint Augustine writes: “What is time? If nobody asks me about this, well, then I know its meaning, but if somebody asks me about it and if I try to explain it, I do not know it any longer.”

Saint Augustine’s remarks about time could also be used regarding identity: identity poses no problems as long as nobody asks questions about it.  Identity is then taken for granted; it comes as something natural. Yet a totally different situation arises the minute we ask ourselves: “Who am I?” or “Who are we?” Or better yet: “What does that mean to be an American? “, “Qui est Français”?, or ” Was ist deutsch? “

It is not at all easy to talk about identity, because contrary to what many people believe (starting with those who want to defend identity), identity is not a simple concept.  It is rather a very complex issue.

Identity is a complex subject because it emerges as a problem precisely at a moment when it is no longer taken as something given. In this sense identity is a typically modern subject.  In traditional societies no one ever questions his identity the reason being that it is taken for granted by all, as something self-evident. Hence our first remark: it is at a moment when identity —  be it individual or collective identity — is under threat, or has already disappeared, that one begins  asking questions as to what identity is all about. This is the case today and this is the reason why identity has become such a burning issue, both on the political and the ideological level. Identity has become a problematic issue in the modern and the postmodern age in view of the fact that its reference points are fading away and in view if the fact that no one really knows any longer what makes the meaning of life. Read more

After the Fall: Beyond Nationalism

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What follows is my speech delivered at the NPI conference at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington DC, on October 26, 2013

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We could replace the noun ‘the fall’ with other related words having stronger, more loaded meanings, such as ‘the end time’ or ‘chaos’ — or ‘the end of a world,’ if not ‘the end of the world.’  These words and expressions come to my mind along with many fear-inspiring images related to our present and future identities.

I hope that none of us here claims to be a futurologist. In hindsight most futurologists have been proven wrong.  Remember the recent break-up of the Soviet Union, a phenomenon which not a single American or European sovietologist could predict. My main thesis is that prophecies about the fall are nothing new.  Since time immemorial, there have been stories, tales, and myths that have presaged the fall, the decline, or the end of time.  The vast majority of European thinkers and authors, from antiquity to postmodernity, have dealt with the notion of the fall and its aftermath.

On the opposite side of the fall there is historical optimism and the belief in Progress.  Progress has become a secular religion today, but fortunately it seems to be showing cracks and is being subject to critical inquires. The belief in progress and its advocates have had a very loud voice over the last 200 hundred years — and particularly over the last 70 years.  Modern advocates of Progress are usually wrapped up in different garbs, such as the Liberal or the Communist garb, or even the Christian garb. Somewhat pejoratively, we can call these people world improvers.  Read more

Recently in The Occidental Quarterly: Special Sections on White Pathology

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This is an introduction to special sections in the Summer and Fall issues of The Occidental Quarterly focused on White pathology. Whatever blame for our situation that we place on others, the bottom line is that we are allowing the unfolding disaster to happen. It is unprecedented for a civilization to voluntarily cede political and cultural hegemony to others, particularly when so many of these people harbor hatreds and resentments toward our people and our culture.

The entire issues are available to subscribers to the electronic versions. (For print subscribers, the Summer issue has been mailed, and the Fall issue is in press.) Click here to subscribe ($30 for electronic subscriptions, $60 for hardcopy U.S. subscriptions).

Before I get to the special sections, I want to highlight another recent paper. Ricardo Duchesne, a professor of sociology at the University of New Brunswick and no stranger to these pages (e.g., here), has an article in the Fall issue on historians who are falsifying history in order to make it more amenable to their multicultural, anti-Western agenda. His title says it all: “Multicultural Historians: The Assault on Western Civilization and Defilement of the Historical Profession.” As we are all aware, the academic world has become a seething cauldron of anti-White sentiment, and right now World History is Exhibit A. It is particularly important is that he is writing under his own name. All good writing is important, but in the long run it’s critical to have people who are out there in the open and willing to take the heat.

The purpose of TOQ is to develop an alternative intellectual universe in opposition to the current dispensation. With the addition of Prof. Duchesne and some of the other writers I will mention (the Summer and Fall issues also have excellent articles by F. Roger Devlin, Andrew Fraser, Nelson Rosit, and Jared Taylor), we are well on the way to achieving a critical mass of smart, well-informed writers able to mount an intellectually rigorous, honest critique of the current multicultural zeitgeist—indeed, the emerging multicultural police state. Read more

Jewish population genetics and intelligence revisted

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When I reviewed the data on Jewish population genetics for my 1994 book, A People That Shall Dwell Alone, the take home message was that Jews were a Middle Eastern group. But that was before the massive improvements in population genetic methods of recent years. One would think that this would result in a clear picture, but that has not been the case. Data showing a strong Middle Eastern connection was challenged by a paper championing the Khazar hypothesis.

I can’t tell you how many people have sent me emails urging me to endorse the Khazar hypothesis, the logic being that if the Khazar hypothesis is true, then Jews have no biological link to Israel.

But my population genetics guru was quite skeptical about that paper, and now a new paper by Marta Costa et al. puts yet another spin on Ashkenazi origins by finding that around 80% of their mitochondrial DNA has a prehistoric European origin and ruling out the Khazar hypothesis. The new results would likely  indicate that the Ashkenazim would be less Near Eastern and more European, so fans of the Khazar hypothesis may have something to cheer about after all.

Combined with previous Y chromosome studies indicating that  the male line is Middle Eastern, the results suggest a scenario in which Jewish males married European females after traveling to Europe. This has happened elsewhere, as with the Lemba.

This study is getting good reviews, but of course we have to remain open to new findings. Science marches onward.

But taking these results at face value, one might hope that Ashkenazi Jews would feel more kinship with Europe rather than the characteristic posture of hostile outsiders adopted by the organized Jewish community and very common among Ashkenazi Jews generally. But I won’t hold my breath. Such attitudes are far more influenced by social identity processes, which are not sensitive to genetic differences, and according to which Christian Europe is a hated outgroup because of its perceived past history of little more than expulsions and persecution.

Nor do the new findings alter the conception of Judaism as a genetically closed group, with all that implies for an evolutionary analysis of between-group competition. After the original matings in the ancient world, the walls were erected; the new findings indicate very little mtDNA from Eastern Europe. Read more

America: the Land of the Free and the Brave or of the Oligarch and the White slave?

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Editor’s note: John Lilburne’s article on White slavery reminds us that for long stretches of the history of England, elites have behaved in a viciously exploitative manner toward others, including other Whites. In the Fall 2013 issue of The Occidental Quarterly on White pathology (print version in press, electronic version available now), Yggdrasil notes of the period from the 16th to the 18th century in England:

The key point here is that the vast majority of Englishmen at the time were slaves in all but name, but since they were not chattel property, no one was bound by law or resale value to take reasonable care of them. Say what you like about the evils of slavery, as chattel property, slaves had a place and a value in society. In effect, the majority of “free” Englishmen at the time were an alien race with no place or value in society and no rights whatsoever.

The small minority in control feared and hated them, to a much greater degree than modern White liberals despise hillbillies, and sought to expel them to distant colonies as a means of suppressing future rebellions.

Of course, this is not the whole story, but it is an important part of it. The other part, in a nutshell, is the rise of egalitarian universalism beginning with the English Civil War of the  17th century. This revolution eventually resulted in the popular movement that resulted in the abolition of slavery  in the 19th century motivated by moral idealism and embedded in various sects of Protestantism, as discussed in the Summer issue of TOQ (subscribe). This campaign against slavery, which occurred at a time when slavery was ubiquitous in all other culture areas (and remains common today in many countries), in turn has enabled an even more dangerous White pathology—the obsessive White guilt and pathological altruism that pervade the contemporary West and that are continually promoted by our hostile elite. 

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Of the Europeans brought to America no fewer than 75% were indentured servants or convicts.
(Power and Plenty, Trade war and the world economy in the Second  Millennium, Ronald Findlay and Kevin O’Rourke,231)

Definitive characteristics of slaves are as follows: their labour or services are obtained through force; their physical beings are regarded as the property of another person, their owner; and they are entirely subject to their owner’s will.
Encarta definition of slavery

This article explores the little known history of White slavery in North America.

What is meant by White slavery? The dictionary definition above shows  it means forced labour, imposed by violence with the state acting to maintain legal status of the slave.

Oligarchs, Slaves and Tudor and Stuart Britain

Slavery in the west waxed and waned according to the demands and attitudes of the elites , the economic situation and the resistance of the populace. The opening up of the trade routes created the opportunity for enslavement of different groups, and the constant Islamic predations on the coasts of Europe (even as far away as Iceland) set an example that could be followed.

In Tudor England there were some Black slaves, who were later removed in Elizabethan times.[1]

Lilburne1

During Elizabethan times the English were proud of their freedom as recorded in the Shakespearean plays. Such were the early Elizabethan times that, in England in the 1570’s Ralph Holinshead could boast.

As for slaves and bondsmen, we have none such as the privilege of our country by the special grace of God and the bounty on a prisoner that if anyone came hither from other realms so soon as they set foot on land they became free. [2] Read more

The Tea Party and the GOP: Heading for Divorce

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Writing in the Wall Street Journal, William A. Galston makes some points that reinforce the still expanding racial fault lines in America (“The Tea Party and the GOP Crackup“) noted in my previous post. The take home message is that there is a rift between (White) Tea Party Republican base representing traditional American conservative rural and small town values versus corporate America and the emerging non-White majority. As always the rhetoric does not explicitly mention race, but it’s looming in the background like the proverbial 800-lb. gorilla. Tea Party Republicans are in the Jacksonian tradition of American politics.

Jacksonians care … passionately about the Second Amendment …. They are suspicious of federal power, skeptical about do-gooding at home and abroad; they oppose federal taxes but favor benefits such as Social Security and Medicare that they regard as earned. Jacksonians are anti-elitist; they believe that the political and moral instincts of ordinary people are usually wiser than those of the experts ….

These Republicans believe that their country has been taken away from them. They are

aroused, angry and above all fearful, in full revolt against a new elite—backed by the new American demography—that threatens its interests and scorns its values.

That’s the crux of the problem in a nutshell. The new hostile elite that has been ascendant since the 1960s has solidified its power by importing a new people—people who want big government, high levels of government services, more immigrants that look like themselves, and who care nothing for the traditional people and culture of America.

Galston points out that most Tea Partiers think that minorities get too much attention from government; 65% view immigrants as a burden on the country. Contrary to elite opinion, they are better educated than the general population and are more likely to be middle class (50%) or upper-middle-class (15%). They are socially conservative on issues like gay marriage. Many are small businessmen who abhor high taxes and government regulation. They have strong economic reasons to oppose the current trend.

Galston concludes:

It’s no coincidence that the strengthening influence of the tea party is driving a wedge between corporate America and the Republican Party. It’s hard to see how the U.S. can govern itself unless corporate America pushes the Republican establishment to fight back against the tea party—or switches sides.

The problem is that corporate America is part of the hostile elite—with a globalist outlook, favoring policies that gut the US labor market and highly susceptible to lawsuits by activists and race hustlers if they deviate in the least from the path of righteousness as defined by the diversitycrats. They are not going to switch sides. Indeed, corporate America is a major employer of diversitycrats.

And so much of the really big corporate-derived money in the Republican party comes from ethnically motivated members of the hostile elite, like the Republican Jewish Coalition (which supports gay marriage and the immigration surge) and Sheldon Adelson in particular. According to ProPublica, Adelson donated at least $98 million and perhaps as much as $150 million to Republican candidates and causes in the last election cycle, mainly motivated by his obsession with Israel. This is the highest total for any individual in American history. But Adelson is no fan of anything remotely resembling Tea Party attitudes.  VDARE’s Patrick Cleburne notes that Adelson describes himself as a “social liberal” in favor of “socialized-type” health care. Definitely not a Tea Partier.

So we have one part of the Republican Party that is furious that their country is being taken away from them, while the other part—the one with most of the money—is actively involved in their dispossession.

This is not a marriage made in heaven. Again, the Tea Party Republicans are “aroused, angry and above all fearful.” In fact, it looks to me like fertile ground for an implicitly White third party. Republican votes, if not Republican money, come from its Tea Party base. A third party with such a Tea Party platform  may not win given that the hostile elite has imported a new electorate opposed to everything the Tea Party holds dear. But when it’s obvious that they can’t win, that’s what revolutions and secessions are made of.