The "I Don't Care After I Die" Argument

A flawed argument.

I’m amused that on some racialist websites, anti-racist commentators show up to promote the individualist idea that since you are going to die anyway, why care about the future racial make-up of the USA or any other country?  Why should it concern you?

First, most people who are not hyper-individualistic narcissistic sociopaths do care about posterity.  People recycle, people care about the environment, people worry about global warming – even if these issues involve events that will take place after the concerned individuals die.  It is normal human nature to at least care about the future of our familial lineages, and Salter’s work makes clear the analogy between family and ethny.  It is responsible stewardship of one’s biological and cultural patrimony to care about the future of one’s people.  Of course, some feel differently.  Salter mentioned that “who cares?” will always be an essentially unanswerable riposte to claims about group interests.  However, others do care – which raises another flaw in the “I don’t care what happens after I die" argument.

The flaw in the “I don’t care after I die” argument is – why then does pro-White advocacy bother the person making the comment?  After all, if the hyper-individualists do not care what the racial situation is after they die, and at the same time we do care, then why don’t the individualists leave us alone to promote what we perceive to be our (group) interests while they can go off and pursue whatever individual interests strike their fancy?

In other words, if Mr. Individualist really doesn’t care about the racial future, then that person should have no objection whatsoever to a future scenario in which White nationalists are victorious and the European peoples thrive in homogeneous homelands.  Correct?  Indeed, such an individualist really should not object to a “Turner Diaries” scenario in which all non-Whites are exterminated and only Whites are left to populate the Earth.  Correct?  After all, if it happens after they die, and they won’t know about it, no problem.  Correct?  A pro-White future should leave them as unmoved and uncaring as an anti-White one.  Correct?

Actually – incorrect, because these self-proclaimed individualists really do care about the racial future – they want to see Whites disposed, mongrelized, and driven to extinction.  This is why they become so hysterical about pro-White activism even when they really shouldn’t care one way or the other what the racial outcome is.  Indeed, some of these so-called “White individualists” may indeed be non-White themselves, or married to a non-White, and therefore have a self-interested objective in attacking White nationalist activism.  In other words, when they say “I don’t care” – they are lying.  If not, I’d invite them to spend time explaining to Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians why those groups should not care about their group survival.  After all, Whites in general seem not to care and are going extinct.  If the hyper-individualists care so much about promoting their individualism, why focus on Whites?  That’s essentially preaching to the choir – after all, the White nationalists are a tiny and powerless fraction of the White population.  Collectivist racialism is prominent among non-White groups, so it is there that the individualists should concentrate their proselytizing efforts.  If they are sincere.

Which they’re not.

Yockey and Biological Race

A flaw in Yockey's work - likely the biggest flaw - is his denial of the importance of biological race, his attacks on "racial materialism" and "Darwinism" and his focus on "horizontal" (i.e., "spiritual") race as opposed to "vertical" (i.e., heriditary, biological) race.

Yockey is somewhat inconsistent, in that he makes clear that Negroes and Chinamen can never be Westerners, and although he cites "culture" for the Chinaman, he does mention physical differences for the Negro.

While some speculate that Yockey's opinions on this topic were formed by his ancestry (Jewish blood?) or the influence of Spengler, another, probably more likely, explanation that  is compatible with the above mentioned inconsistencies, is that Yockey was focused on intra-European racial differences.

One must remember when Yockey was writing, and that, while today, most people use "race" to mean the major continental population groups, in the past, there was much talk about the "Nordic" and "Alpine" and "Mediterranean" "races" of Europe.  Indeed, it was sometimes customary to talk of the "English race" or other "races" constituting what most today would call ethnic groups (of course "race" boundaries can be somewhat subjective - race or subrace? - and one can use "ethny" to denote various levels of biological differentiation).

Further, the "Nordicism" or "Germanism" or "Aryanism" of the National Socialist regime was fresh in everyone's mind when Yockey wrote Imperium, and Yockey directly critiques "materialist" National Socialist race theory.  The following quote from Imperium is instructive as to Yockey's probable motivation:

The touching of this racial-frontier case of the Negro however, shows to Europe a very important fact — that race-difference between white men, which means Western men, is vanishingly small in view of their common mission of actualizing a High Culture. In Europe, where hitherto the race difference between, say, Frenchman and Italian has been magnified to great dimensions, there has been no sufficient reminder of the race-differences outside the Western Civilization. Adequate instruction along this line would apparently have to take the form of occupation of all Europe, instead of only part of it, by Negroes from America and Africa, by Mongols and Turkestani from the Russian Empire.

Thus, I suspect that Yockey was primarily focused on "race" in its narrower aspects, and took for granted that people would understand the physical differences between Europeans, Africans, and Asians.  On the other hand, Yockey was concerned that an emphasis on "racial materialism" would damage the Western unity he so desperately wished to foster.

Perhaps Yockey could be excused given he wrote Imperium before the discovery of DNA and didn't have access to today's knowledge, especially the Salterian idea of Ethnic Genetic Interests.  The Yockey "problem" can be 'solved" by acknowledging  the biological differences that exist within Europe, and that these need to be preserved, but that these differences are small in the global context, and need not impede the Western Unity that Yockey recognized is all-important.