"Zoological race" and a balanced perspective.
This is another installment in my evaluation of what I believe is the proper place for Yockeyian race concepts in scientifically enlightened racial activism. These installments will be relatively short; rather than put the reader to sleep with overly complex and lengthy essays, it is better to focus on one or two major points at a time.
In analogy to the “only Nixon could go to China” meme, perhaps someone like myself, with a long history of promoting, and writing about, genetics-based race concepts and the importance of genetic interests, is best suited to critique the hyper-fetishization of what Yockey would call “zoological race” among many in the “movement.”
“Zoological race” here means the concept of race as a (purely) materialist and biological concept, which in Yockey’s day dealt with traditional physical anthropology, cephalic indices, overall physical appearance and so forth, and which today would of course include various genetic components of ancestry. Thus, Yockey derided this racial concept as being akin to classifying animal species in zoological terms, and the proponents of the “spiritual race” view object to viewing human races as rigid categories as one would view different animals in a zoo, how a taxonomist would view animal morphology, or how a college course in Zoology would bin animal species in various Orders and Genera.
Now, I stand by my previous assertions that “spiritual race” concepts are nonsense, and that race, at its fundamental basis, is a materialist and “zoological” concept. However, that said, a more sober and measured consideration of Yockeyian criticism is called for. While the foundation of race is biological materialism, there is more to it than just that. Further, even when considering facts about “zoological race,” there is a danger of going too far, obsessing over racial classification, of missing the forest for the trees.
Let us consider what I wrote in the past, comparing the extremes of Yockeyism vs. the extremes of Salterism:
Yockey’s major weakness is that he not only ignores the importance of biological race, but actually attacks the materialist basis of race itself. Stripped of a firm foundation of biology, Yockeyian culturalism could, in theory, degenerate into a nationalist version of “constitutional patriotism/citizenism,” in which commitment to a “High Culture” trumps biological preservationism, and genetic extinction is acceptable as long as “the High Culture” remains. This in clearly unacceptable.
Hence, the EGI Firewall idea. There has to be, at the very least, a minimal “floor” of basic consideration of genetic interests. Thus, no matter what decisions are made, no matter what political constructs are actualized, no matter what group definitions are accepted, there will be a line drawn against significantly maladaptive outcomes. Only those Yockeyian memes consistent with preservation of fundamental EGI are acceptable.
If there is a choice between several political options, each with different costs and benefits to genetic interests, it is obvious that we need to know what those genetic interests are, so that the different possible outcomes can be calculated and evaluated. There may well be circumstances in which an option that incurs a greater cost is chosen over one that incurs a lesser cost, and for reasons that may well be justified, but how can we know what the costs are until we actually calculate the genetic interests involved?
Further, perhaps more realistically, there may be scenarios in which choices that incur a greater gross cost in genetic interests are chosen because these may have a net benefit of genetic interests, particularly in the long term. Again, the only way for us to evaluate this is to actually know the genetic interests involved. Otherwise, we are “flying blind” and making decisions without a full understanding of the actual costs of one choice vs. another.
On the other hand, Salterism has two weaknesses. First, a call to “preserve our distinctive genetic information” is unlikely to motivate most Western individuals to defend their genetic interests against the titanic forces arrayed against them. It almost certainly will not motivate the masses, who, as Michael O’Meara rightfully points out, are always induced to act by “myths” that encompass a cohesive worldview. Even rational activists can often become more motivated by these “myths” (which may of course constitute objective facts to a considerable degree) than to a pure empiricism. Thus, the “myth” of Yockeyan “High Culture” may be needed to motivate the defense of rational Salterian EGI.
That is one reason why Revilo Oliver, despite some reservations about Yockey’s race ideas, endorsed Imperium as “the book” of the National Youth Alliance. The core ideals of that book are independent of “spiritual race” or even of “Spenglerian pessimism” (or the stark dichotomy between the Classical and Western High Cultures) that Yockey promoted and that Oliver disagreed with to one degree or another. The core ideals of Imperium are more uplifting than navel-gazing obsessions over cephalic indices or admixture percentages. There is a cultural, civilizational component to racial and ethnic identity; such a component may be secondary to the underlying biological component, but it is important, crucial, and necessary all the same .In addition, the biological and cultural components are inter-related and cannot truly be separated – genes determine culture and cultures select for genes, thus affecting the consequent phenotypes, which in turn influence culture to continue the feedback loop. Ignoring High Culture just because Yockey went too far with it is (almost) as bad as completely ignoring racial materialism.
Second, genetic interests are based upon differences and distinctions, and all individuals (except identical twins, if we ignore certain subtleties) differ in their genetic information. Therefore, the potential exists for an unrestrained focus on genetic interests to itself degenerate into a maladaptive genetic atomization—with the natural organic solidarity of particular ethnies, and of the West as a whole, disintegrating under an ever more fine series of biological divisions.
This is an important point, and one that many in the “movement” – with their ethnonationalism, subracial and ethnic fetishism and other Nutzi traits – do not accept. There’s a difference between gross genetic interests and net genetic interests. Attempts to maximize genetic interests in the gross sense, to maximize every possible quanta of genetic interests regardless of the consequences, is likely to backfire and cause problems that in the long term reduce group competitiveness and adaptive fitness, reducing the final outcome of net genetic interests. Tempering Salterism with a bit of Yockeyian skepticism about “zoological race” may assist in preventing us from lurching too hard in the other direction of excessive racial obsession.
Note that even something as reasonable as a consideration of EGI can go too far when untempered by other considerations. Now consider that the “movement’s” racial obsessions are typically far less rational and scientific than Salterian EGI. Given the undercurrent of irrationality of much of the “movement’s disjunctive “thinking” about race, it is very easy for such irrational “thought” to go too far – as it so often does.
So if even Salterism needs to be balanced by Yockeyism, the unhinged dark corners of “movement” racial ranting needs to be replaced by a Yockeyism balanced by Salterism. Thus, Salterian Yockeyism – the Salter-Yockey synthesis - replaces Nutzi race fetishism and replaces the sort of Evolian “spiritual race” nonsense championed by Yockey.
Thus, we do away with a purely zoological consideration of racial conception in favor of a more nuanced approach that of course has a materialist foundation but adds to that.
We free our people from the hyper-materialist zoo and take a broader view of who we are, a more rational sense of Identity.
