Diagnostic Pseudomorphosis

Spenglerian thoughts.

In this essay, I will use the Spenglerian concept of Pseudomorphosis, and the idea that an embryonic/early High Culture suffering from Pseudomorphosis will exhibit resentment and hostility to the offending established High Culture, to diagnose the presence of a very early stage new High Culture, and to gain some insights into its characteristics. To illustrate this possibility, I will use my idea of an Overman High Culture as a model.

See this. White Nationalism 3.0 alert - a Turk writes for Counter-Currents attacking Russians. The Counter-Currents article is well-written and does in fact make several interesting arguments, although some commentators point out how the thesis of that article is being over-stretched to fit a potentialy misleading narrative. Of course, questioning motives instead of arguments would be ad hominem, so I will not ascribe the article to the historical grievances of Turks against Russia nor of that of homosexuals against Putin's Russia.

My “take” on this issue is as follows and is based not only on my reading of history, but also “anecdotal” real-life experience knowing a reasonable number of Eastern European immigrants (real Eastern Europeans, not Jews), as well as having travelled in Eastern Europe, staying with private citizens, not in hotels, and meeting a variety of people. Russia can be considered a separate civilization from the West but it is not necessarily hostile; Russian-Western relations is contingent on history. Being invaded by Swedes, French, and Germans has not helped. If Russia was treated differently after the “end of the Cold War” then the situation today could be quite different. I agree that there are some civilizational tensions between Russia and the West but there is also opportunity for cohesion and collaboration, as two heads of a single European organism. As regards non-Russian Eastern Europeans (especially the Orthodox), while they are not fully of the West, they are not fully non-Western either. They fall somewhere in between the West and Russia, with the Catholic ones being more oriented toward the West, and the Orthodox ones more oriented toward Russia (culturally, not politically), but they are all (potentially) assimilable to the West. The Faustian Western High Culture - not the modern degeneration of it - has possibilities in Eastern Europe. Even Yockey (an extreme Western chauvinist) wrote, in The Proclamation of London, that there were elements in Russia amenable to the West.  

A general thesis of Spengler, O'Meara, and the Counter-Currents article is that Russia may be the center of its own High Culture, which is still in its early embryonic form. Of course, any High Culture can only arise if the human material is there, and a “Russian High Culture” cannot arise without the Russian people, who are being race replaced as are all other Whites. One other thing – High Cultures, and civilizations in general, are emergent properties of large numbers of particular Race-Culture types living in a defined territorial space. Let us assume that Russia is indeed a separate civilization. However, small numbers of Russians can assimilate into the Western culture. Certainly, Russian-Americans do not behave significantly different from other White Americans. However, masses of Russians, living amongst themselves – particularly on their native soil to which they have a historical connection – will likely manifest civilizational differences to the West. Just as a crowd takes on a distinct “personality” independent of the individuals of which it is composed, so does a culture emerge from a mass effect. Also see this for a more materialistic explanation for the adherence of certain peoples to particular cultural forms as part of their “racial soul.” The emergent “twist” on the idea in that "empirical racial soul" post is that these tendencies may be weak on an individual basis, but manifest in a synergistic fashion when masses of similar “racial souls” congregate together. An individual, or small groups of individuals immigrating over a period of time, likely will, or can, assimilate into another cultural form, but a large group introduced, particularly en masse, into an different culture likely will not.

The same Turk elsewhere:

Wouldn’t it be amazing if Eastern and Northern Europe were the most powerful and influential among Western countries? Oh wait… They can be. Time for Intermarium.

Surprise! A Non-European Caucasian (NEC) wants to divide Europeans, and exclude Southern Europeans from a narrower White subgroup. I am shocked, shocked I say!  Indeed, it is almost as shocking and surprising as the sun rising in the morning.

If only, say, Germany and the UK would be as “powerful and influential” in Europe as Italy or Greece...If only the power center in France would be in Paris in the north rather than Marseille in the south…If only Sweden was as influential in Europe as Portugal, if only Madrid was as influential as Brussels. Oh wait…

Note to mendacious alien Turk - Northern Europe IS the "most powerful and influential among Western countries." That is precisely why we are in the predicament we are in.

You can always count on NEC concern trolls to attack the Pan-European ideal, either directly or indirectly. Every. Single. Time.

Back to the Counter-Currents article: 

He termed such cultural amalgamation where a certain cultural realm is forced to express itself under alien cultural forms imported or imposed from elsewhere as Pseudomorphosis. Oswald Spengler thus predicted a century earlier that Russia will be moving away from the European (Faustian) Civilization and asserting its own unique identity.

One vivid example of historical Pseudomorphosis is the pre-Islamic Middle East, which Spengler called Magian Culture, being dominated by Rome and hence forced to express itself through the forms of Graeco-Roman (Apollonian) Culture, which was entirely alien to it. Only with the advent of Islam did the Magian Culture free itself from Graeco-Roman influence and could express itself organically in line with its own nature.

It is therefore quite likely that Russia is undergoing a process similar to that which the Middle East underwent in the 6th and 7th centuries, when with the rise of Islam, it emphatically asserted its own nature. As a matter of fact, throughout the centuries of Roman rule and domination of the Classical cultural norms the Middle East was seething with apocalyptic hatred towards Rome and everything Roman. In this regard, Islam can be viewed as the consummate form of expression of the deepest longings of the Magian world. At the same time, it was the medium through which the ressentiment towards the Graeco-Roman culture manifested itself. The intensity of that ressentiment was huge due to centuries of cultural suppression under Rome and being forced into the mould of the forms of Apollonian Culture, which were unnatural to the Magian Culture.

This explains the enmity the Islamic (i.e. Magian) world today manifests towards the West, which is represented by Christianity and which they view as the continuation of Rome…

…Importantly, the liberation of an emerging culture from the grip of Pseudomorphosis often unleashes a deep-seated hatred and ressentiment toward the dominant culture that once suppressed it. This phenomenon can be observed across various historical contexts…The Crusades can therefore be seen as the Faustian world’s emphatic rejection of the Eastern cultural dominance that had constrained it for centuries, marking a decisive moment in the assertion of Western identity and independence.

The following analysis in my post is based on the premise that Pseudomorphosis is a valid concept and the idea that it can breed resentment and hostility is correct.

According to Wikipedia:

The concept of pseudomorphosis is one that Spengler borrows from mineralogy and is introduced as a way of explaining what he calls half-developed or only partially manifested Cultures. Specifically, pseudomorphosis refers to an older Culture or Civilization being so deeply ingrained that a young Culture cannot find its own form and full expression of itself. In Spengler's words, this leads to the young soul being cast in the old molds, young feelings then stiffen in senile practices, and instead of expanding creatively, it fosters hate toward the older Culture.

Spengler believed that a Magian pseudomorphosis began with the Battle of Actium, in which the gestating Arabian Culture was represented by Mark Antony and lost to the Classical Civilization. The battle was different from the conflict between Rome and Greece, which had been fought out at Cannae and Zama, with Hannibal being the representative of Hellenism. He said that Antony should have won at Actium, and his victory would have freed the Magian Culture, but his defeat imposed Roman Civilization on it.

In Russia, Spengler saw a young, undeveloped Culture in a pseudomorphosis under the Faustian (Petrine) form. He said that Peter the Great distorted the tsarism of Russia to the dynastic form of Western Europe. The burning of Moscow, as Napoleon was set to invade, he described as a primitive expression of hatred toward the foreigner. In the following entry of Alexander I into Paris, the Holy Alliance and the Concert of Europe, he said that Russia was forced into an artificial history before its culture was ready or capable of understanding its burden. This would result in a hatred toward Europe, which Spengler said poisoned the womb of an emerging new Culture in Russia. While he does not name the Culture, he said that Tolstoy is its past and Dostoyevsky is its future.

It is possible that a new High Culture emerges without ever having had experienced Pseudomorphosis. But let us focus on the possibility that Pseudomorphosis does in fact take place. Imagine a new High Culture – the very earliest stages, the “pre-cultural” phase as well as the earliest glimmers of the new civilization – arising on the territory occupied by the old, preceding, late stage High Culture. You would expect the new High Culture, particularly as it physically overlaps the old and is subject to the sociopolitical power of the old, will suffer from Pseudomorphosis, and will exhibit resentment toward the older culture.

Let us forget about the Russian High Culture for a moment. The focus of this essay is this – if a purely European (including the Diaspora) new High Culture is emerging, or will emerge, among the ruins of the Faustian Western Culture, then what signs would be observed of this based on the phenomenon of resentment due to imposed Pseudomorphosis? Would these signs point to us the existence of a possible new High Culture and of some possible characteristics that it will manifest? In other words, can we use a diagnostic Pseudomorphosis, observing reactions to possible Pseudomorphosis to diagnose the existence of pre-cultural or early state High Culture and to identify its characteristics? I would think that any future European High Culture would, if it is in any sort of existence today, be in the exceedingly early pre-cultural stage. Therefore, one would need to look extremely hard for this embryonic culture, and try very hard to dissect out signs of resentment of that early cultural form toward the older culture among all the "background noise" of modern life.

Further, one needs to look for such resentment coming specifically from the Right, particularly the Far Right. Why? Two reasons. 

First, we are considering here only potential purely European High Cultures. Whether or not some type of non-White, mixed-raced, multiracial High Culture emerges is of no interest to me. By definition it is not what I am looking for. The Left is opposed to the survival of European peoples and, to be honest, the Mainstream Right is as well. Only the Far Right is focused on saving European peoples and so it is reasonable to expect that a new European High Culture will emerge from a milieu that is purely European and that is focused on preserving the European peoples. One cannot expect a purely European High Culture to emerge from a multiracial morass intent on exterminating Europeans.

Second, one would expect to see resentment from the Left with respect to the West under all circumstances, regardless of Pseudomorphosis. How can one tease out leftist resentment toward the West due to Pseudomorphosis (that would be imposed on a possible embryonic Left-Woke High Culture) from run-of-the-mill leftist hatred of the West and Whites, or from hatred toward the West from non-White civilizational blocs that already exist? One could not distinguish the signal of a Pseudomorphosis-driven resentment from the background noise of generalized leftist and non-White hatred of the West. Never mind that it is unlikely that the degeneracy of the Left, the mish-mash of multiculturalism, will give birth to any new High Culture – it is the opposite of High Culture and anathema to civilization. On the other hand, the Far Right is typically well disposed to the Western High Culture, and does not naturally have resentment to that High Culture. Therefore, the presence of anti-Western Far Right resentment should be a diagnostic clue, a warning sign, a ringing alert bell that something is going on, and that something could be resentment due to an embryonic new European High Culture suffering from Pseudomorphosis from the Faustian West.

Three caveats: First, with respect to Pseudomorphosis, the resentment from the Far Right has to be against the authentic Faustian Western High Culture, not the degenerate “West” exemplified by the Woke Left System. Second, the resentment cannot be in the form of resentment based on adherence to old, passed cultural forms, e.g., hostility to Christianity because one adheres to Classical Greco-Roman values or because one is an Odinist pagan. The resentment has to derive from the suppression of a new value system, a new cultural form. Third, although resentment from a political and artistic direction is expected from the (Far) Right in the scenario described here, it is also possible to have, in certain contexts, apolitical resentment as well. This apolitical resentment would likely come from the realm of science. Most scientists today are leftists and would share the typical generalized leftist resentment of the West described above. However, among more objective, apolitical, dispassionate White scientists, demonstrations of cultural resentment, or even frustration, may be a sign of a reaction to Pseudomorphosis. Of course, the few rightist scientists, typically well disposed toward the West, can be particularly useful "canaries in the coal mine" with respect to possible resentment toward the West - if even they demonstrate such resentment in particular contexts, what does that tell us? Perhaps it is a reaction to Pseudomorphosis in the realm of science and due to frustration with the underlying metaphysics of the dominant older culture. So, resentment due to Western Pseudomorphosis does not necessarily have to be politically rightist, it could be apolitical (as in science), but it most definitely would not be expected from the Left.

In my Overman essay, I wrote:

…of course a High Culture is an organic phenomenon that cannot be created in a pre-planned form and artificially imposed on a people. However, it is possible to plant the seeds and to have some choice as to which seeds are planted. And then, we can nurture the seedling as it grows, and as it develops according to its own inherent character. This we can do and this we must do.

Of course dogmatic Spenglerians would reject that idea of "planting seeds," and also reject the idea that we can predict the form a new High Culture would take. But I am not a dogmatic Spenglerian, so let us proceed with my hypothesis outlined in this post, based on its assumptions of analyzing a model system of a potential new High Culture.

Therefore, I will use my Overman idea as a model for this analysis. I know others have offered alternative possibilities for a future European High Culture. One example is a High Culture based on Spenglerian cyclicity; thus, instead of a worldview based on upward-looking Faustian overcoming, it will instead be based on a view that everything moves in cycles and the entire metaphysics and epistemology and cultural artifacts of the society would be based on that. However, I see it as too convenient to use Spengler’s central idea to predict a High Culture based precisely upon that central idea. Of course, others would make similar critiques of my Overman High Culture; they would argue that it is too convenient for someone from a Faustian High Culture to predict a new High Culture than further transcends the Faustian in its upward impulses. Very well. But we cannot really predict any of this, so I will proceed with my Overman-based analysis; I have already made clear that it is being used as a model system to illustrate how potential reactions to Pseudomorphosis could be used to diagnose these issues. 

Just as Yockey talked about several types of Culture Disease, here I discuss Culture Diagnosis. The overall idea applies to whatever form a new High Culture may take, as long as Pseudomorphosis and a reaction to that is present. If there is no Pseudomorphosis then obviously one cannot base diagnostics on that, and would simply need to be attuned to what the early, embryonic stages of a new High Culture would be like, which is a much more general non-specific approach. Is speculating about High Cultures itself an embryonic form, or sign, of such a culture? Who knows? But back to Pseudomorphosis.

What exactly is the Faustian Western High Culture? See here. That is a somewhat confused essay. Duchesne argues – as Oliver did and I once did (I have changed my mind on this after reading Quigley) – that Ancient Greece and Rome at least partially fit with the Faustian ideal. But then he, somewhat approvingly, cites Spengler’s idea of the Nordic origins of Faustianism.  Unfortunately for the Nordicists, current available genetic data do not support that the Ancient Greeks and Romans were Nordic. If the Faustian ideal is Nordic and if the Ancient Greeks and Romans exemplified this ideal before the historical emergence of Germanic Faustianism, but the Greeks and Romans were not Nordic, you have a problem. You could of course just say the Faustian idea is European – that would also fit with the Faustian Portuguese explorers who also were not Nordic – but Nordicism is an obsession that is impermeable to facts and logic.

Side note: If the focal point of the birth of the modern West according to Quigley was France (I suppose Spengler would stress the Germanic peoples) and if we accept Quigley’s idea that a new culture springs up, in a geographic sense, on the periphery of the old (e.g., France compared to the Greco-Roman world), then perhaps a new European High Culture will originate in Southern and/or Eastern Europe (by Eastern I would exclude Russia if we are to accept that they are potentially birthing their own High Culture), which are on the periphery of France and Germany, whuch are generally considered the center of the Faustian cultural form.

Duchesne writes:

If I had to choose one word to identify the uniqueness of the West it would be “Faustian.” This is the word Oswald Spengler used to designate the “soul” of the West. He believed that Western civilization was driven by an unusually dynamic and expansive psyche. The “prime-symbol” of this Faustian soul was “pure and limitless space.” This soul had a “tendency towards the infinite,” a tendency most acutely expressed in modern mathematics. The “infinite continuum,” the exponential logarithm and “its dissociation from all connexion with magnitude” and transference to a “transcendent relational world” were some of the words Spengler used to describe Western mathematics. But he also wrote of the “bodiless music” of the Western composer, “in which harmony and polyphony bring him to images of utter ‘beyondness’ that transcend all possibilities of visual definition,” and, before the modern era, of the Gothic “form-feeling” of “pure, imperceptible, unlimited space” (Decline of the West, Vol.1, Form and Actuality [Alfred Knopf, 1923] 1988, pp. 53-90).

This soul type was first visible, according to Spengler, in medieval Europe, starting with Romanesque art, but particularly in the “spaciousness of Gothic cathedrals,” “the heroes of the Grail and Arthurian and Siegfried sagas, ever roaming in the infinite, and the Crusades,” including “the Hohenstaufen in Sicily, the Hansa in the Baltic, the Teutonic Knights in the Slavonic East, [and later] the Spaniards in America, [and] the Portuguese in the East Indies.” Spengler thus viewed the West as a strikingly vibrant culture driven by a type of personality overflowing with expansive impulses, “intellectual will to power.” “Fighting,” “progressing,” “overcoming of resistances,” battling “against what is near, tangible and easy” — these were some of the terms Spengler used to describe this soul (Decline of the West, pp. 183-216).

A variety of words have been used to describe or identify the peculiar history of the West: “individualist,” “rationalist,” “imperialist,” “secularist,” “restless,” and “racist.” Spengler’s term “Faustian,” it seems to me, best captures the persistent, and far greater, originality of the West since ancient times in all the intellectual, artistic, and heroic spheres of life.

Wikipedia states:

According to Spengler, the Faustian culture began in Western Europe around the 10th century, and had such expansionary power that by the 20th century it was covering the entire earth, with only a few regions where Islam provided an alternative world view. He described it as having a world feeling inspired by the concept of infinitely wide and profound space, the yearning towards distance and infinity.[clarification needed] The term "Faustian" is a reference to Goethe's Faust (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had a massive effect on Spengler), in which a dissatisfied Intellectual is willing to make a pact with the Devil in return for unlimited knowledge. Spengler believed that this represented the Western Man's limitless metaphysic, unrestricted thirst for knowledge, and constant confrontation with the Infinite.

In my Overman article, I quoted an older version of the Wikipedia article that importantly stated:

His description of the Faustian civilization is one where the populace constantly strives for the unattainable—making Western Man a proud but tragic figure, for while he strives and creates he secretly knows the actual goal will never be reached.

Note: "unattainable." To which I wrote in my Overman essay:

Here we see two defining characteristics of the “Faustian” civilization of the modern (i.e., post-Classical) West: first, a focus on infinity and the unknown, and second, that the striving toward that focus will always be unsuccessful; the objectives of Western Man are always “unattainable.”…

…I would argue that the Christian foundation of the Faustian High Culture is responsible for the fact that the ultimate goals that Western man strives toward end up being “unattainable”—and secretly known by him to be “unattainable.” The Christian mindset places inherent limits within the mind of Western man, so he is doomed to ultimately fail even if full success is theoretically possible…The full development of Western man has been restrained by an alien religion that has placed shackles on his mind and his soul…The motto of the Classical World was “Know Thyself,” while that of the Faustian Age was a combination of “Thou Shalt Not Know” with “Thou Shalt Try to Know and Thou Shalt Fail.” I propose that the new High Culture of the West have the motto: “Thou Shalt Know and Thou Shalt Overcome.” This will usher in an era in which Western Man unlocks his potential by unlocking the shackles imposed by an assumed inferiority to imaginary gods…In other words, no imaginary gods. It is Man that will become “God.”…No more “proud, tragic” failure in “striving for the unattainable” in the “Faustian” culture—instead the Overman Culture will be characterized by the proud successful attainment of the infinite. That is what a hopeful individual can project as the new High Culture of the West, with links to the Classical and the Faustian, but surpassing both in the aim and objective of the human spirit. 

So, we begin to observe differences between the Western (Faustian) and Overman High Cultures.

Another difference that I now add to my original thesis is that while the Faustian culture has the view of unlimited expansion upward and outward, the Overman culture has that view AND an unlimited expansion inward and downward as well, thus not only to the macro infinity but also to the micro infinity. Further, the Overman High Culture has a worldvieview associated with entangled essences, and relative frames of reference. Thus, from a metaphysical standpoint – and please forget for the moment about “Jewish influences” (e.g., agonizing over Einstein) – is it possible that such things as quantum mechanics and relativity theory are not merely the “materialistic degeneration” of the Winter of the West, but the seeds of a new formulation in opposition to Western ideas of classical reality and Newtonian mechanics? The inward expansion is suggested by quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, and genetics (and the whole molecular and cellular basis of life, in contrast to organismal and comparative anatomy) – thus, micro infinity. Entangled essences and relative frames of reference are associated with quantum mechanics (micro infinity) and special relativity (macro infinity), respectively. General relativity yields a quite different metaphysical view of space and gravity - macro infinity - than Newtonian physics does. In the old view, time flows; in the new metaphysics, time is a compilation of static realities connected by causality. The outward impulses toward the infinite are in one sense constrained by these new theories, but in another sense liberated from clockwork Newtonian and Copernican ideals, possibly opening up novel ways to break through the “try to transcend and fail” limitations of Faustianism. Perhaps the Faustian inevitably fails because its metaphysics sets it up for failure by not understanding views of realty that would be better comprehended by a different culture. Perhaps there is Pseudomorphosis at work here. Thus, we cannot understand the underlying realty of these new metaphysical laws because our way of thinking is constrained by Western Newtonian metaphysics. We believe that we are rejecting Newtonian ideals, but those ideas are so part of our worldview that the proper development of the alternative metaphysics is stifled. We believe that we are rejecting the old ways of thinking but we are still prisoners of them, and then fume in frustration when we come up against unknowns and “paradoxes” that seem to emerge from the new metaphysics. 

The same Pseudomorphosis may hold true in art. An archetypical expression of the Western soul is this, which is valued as a high form of expression by those who adhere to the Western tradition. However, such traditional Western art forms may be suffocating alternative artistic expression from a new High Culture, an embryonic example of which may be this. A representative of the Western culture would look at those two images and think that the David is a perfect example of Western artistic beauty that speaks to the Faustian soul, while the Chronos is a degenerate monstrosity. A representative of the Overman culture would acknowledge that the David is an important piece of work and would instrumentally value it as a creation of European genius (just as Westerners can admire products of the Classical civilization), but they would view the Chronos as representing the soul of the Overman civilizational worldview. And, yes, there may well be resentment that the Western art forms (e.g., David) are dominant within the rightist milieu and that more futurist cultural artifacts (e.g., Chronos) are dismissed and not properly comprehended. This here is another example of an artwork that may resonate more with an embryonic Overman sensibility while being rejected by Western traditionalists as “degenerate." Also consider this as another representation of a new artistic sensibility perhaps not properly understood by the defenders of the Western tradition..

We can bridge the gap from art to politics by considering futurism. Was the futurist movement an example of late stage Western culture, or was it a protest by an embryonic High Culture against the Pseudomorphosis imposed by Western art forms and by Western sociopolitical conventions? Note the importance of Italy in the futurist movement – was that an example of an embryonic High Culture emerging on the periphery of the Franco-German epicenter of the modern West? A radical idea – what if the Romanian Legionary Movement suffered from Pseudomorphosis by their embrace of Christianity as a core of their belief system? What if the New Man was actually the authentic core of that movement, reflective of the values of an embryonic new European High Culture (again in the periphery of the older, established Western one, given the geographic location of Romania), and so could one find in some of the more aggressive cult-like activities of the Legion hidden resentment against this Westernized Christian Pseudomorphosis?

Are all these things signs of resentment against Pseudomorphosis imposed by the Faustian culture? We observe the new scientific perspectives that aggressively reject old structures but find themselves struggling to articulate their metaphysics in a manner truly independent of the old. We see artistic movements that aggressively reject old forms. Fascism was perhaps a political revolt against Western political forms – Pseudomorphosis here was manifested by the defeat of Fascism by the democratic and economic (including Marxism) axes of the late-stage West, akin to the Magian High Culture being defeated by the Apollonian/Classical High Culture at Actium. Also note the links between futurism and Italian fascism. One wonders. Is the Yockey Imperium idea characteristic of a late stage Western High Culture or is it an idea that instead fits better with a fresh civilizational perspective?

Moral and ethical resentment against Western Christianity from a Nietzschean perspective may fit here – was Nietzsche less of a figure of old Western culture and more a Dostoevsky-like figure of an embryonic new High Culture? Certainly, Nietzsche – despite his tirades against ressentiment – demonstrated much hostility to restrictive old Western moral and ethical forms.

Let us consider Francis Parker Yockey, a paragon, an aggressive defender, of the Western Faustian High Culture. Yockey in Imperium (emphasis added) demonstrates his inability to understand the new science, exactly what one would expect from a representative of one High Culture trying to understand the metaphysics of another:

The down-going of science as a mental discipline had long preceded the World War. With the theory of Entropy (1850), and the introduction of the idea of irreversibility into its picture, science was on the road which was to culminate in physical relativity and frank admission of the subjectivity of physical concepts. From Entropy came the introduction of statistical methods into systematic science, the beginning of spiritual abdication. Statistics described Life and the living; the strict tradition of Western science had insisted on exactitude in mathematical description of reality, and had hence despised that which was not susceptible of exact description, such as biology. The entrance of probabilities into formerly exact science is the sign that the observer is beginning to study himself, his own form as conditioning the order and describability of phenomena. 

The next step was the Theory of Radioactivity, which again contains strong subjective elements and requires the Calculus of Probabilities to describe its results. The scientific picture of the world became ever more refined, and ever more subjective. The formerly separate disciplines drew slowly together, mathematics, physics, chemistry, epistemology, logic. Organic ideas intruded showing once more that the observer has reached the point where he is studying the form of his own Reason. 

A chemical element now has a lifetime, and the precise events of its life are unpredictable, indeterminate. 

The very unit of physical happening itself, the ―atom,‖ which was still believed in as a reality by the 19th century, became in the 20th century a mere concept, the description of whose properties was constantly changed to meet and prop up technical developments. Formerly, every experiment merely showed the ―truth‖ of the ruling theories. That was in the days of the supremacy of science as a discipline over technics, its adopted child. But, before the middle of the 20th century, every new experiment brought about a new hypothesis of ―atomic structure.‖ What was important in the process was not the hypothetical house of cards which was erected afterwards, but the experiment which had gone before. 

No compunction was felt about having two theories, irreconcilable with one another, to describe the ―structure‖ of the ―atom,‖ or the nature of light. The subject-matter of all the separate sciences could no longer be kept mathematically clear. Old concepts like mass, energy, electricity, heat, radiation, merged into one another, and it became ever more clear that what was really under study was the human reason, in its epistemological aspect, and the Western soul in its scientific aspect.

Scientific theories reached the point where they signified nothing less than the complete collapse of science as a mental discipline. The picture was projected of the Milky Way as consisting of more than a million fixed stars, among which are many with a diameter of more than 93,000,000 miles; this again as not a stationary cosmic center, but itself in motion toward Nowhere at a speed of more than 600 kilometers a second. The cosmos is finite, but unlimited; boundless, but bounded. This demands of the true believer the old Gothic faith again: credo quia absurdum, but mechanical purposelessness cannot evoke this kind of faith, and the high priests have apostatized. In the other direction, the ―atom‖ has equally fantastic dimensions — a ten-millionth of a millimeter is its diameter, and the mass of a hydrogen atom stands to the mass of a gram of water as the mass of a post card stands to the mass of the earth. But this atom consists of ―electrons,‖ the whole making up a sort of solar system, in which the distances between the planets is as great, in proportion to their mass, as in our solar system. The diameter of an electron is one three-billionth of a millimeter. But the closer it is studied, the more spiritual it becomes, for the nucleus of the atom is a mere charge of electricity, having neither weight, volume, inertia nor any other classic properties of matter. 

In its last great saga, science dissolved its own psychical foundations, and moved outside the world of the senses into the world of the soul. Absolute time was dissolved, and time became a function of position. Mass became spiritualized into energy. The idea of simultaneity was discarded, motion became relative, parallels cut one another, two distances could no longer be said absolutely to equal one another. Everything which had once been described by, or had itself described, the word Reality, dissolved in the last act of the drama of science as a mental discipline.

Let us focus on this excerpt from Yockey’s diatribe:

…the strict tradition of Western science had insisted on exactitude in mathematical description of reality, and had hence despised that which was not susceptible of exact description, such as biology. The entrance of probabilities into formerly exact science is the sign that the observer is beginning to study himself, his own form as conditioning the order and describability of phenomena. 

Thus, we see the contrast between the metaphysics of the Faustian West and the metaphysics of what could be the embryonic beginning of a new High Culture.

It is true that we do not observe scientists demonstrating overt resentment and hostility based on contrasting metaphysics, but that may be expected from a group that allegedly represents objective rational academic dispassionate discourse.  What we observe instead is frustration due to a lack of understanding of the new concepts, and due to the fact that a thorough understanding of the new metaphysics may be impeded by viewing everything through the lens of Western metaphysics. Of course, the majority of scientists, who are on the Left, do in fact demonstrate resentment and hostility toward the West, but this is derived from leftist political ideology, not metaphysics. The White Left shares the same basic metaphysics as does the West and that metaphysics is not compatible with a true understanding of the newer concepts. Further, the reason non-White scientists are unable to fully understand these concepts would not be due to Pseudomorphosis (as it is with rightist or apolitical Whites) but simply because these new concepts derive from an embryonic High Culture that derives from Europe and from which an inner spiritual connection is barred to non-Europeans. Note that I do not sense the same frustration from non-Whites concerning these concepts, simply a lack of full understanding that they, as culture aliens, accept with more equanimity.

Let us back up a bit. How can we succinctly describe the basic metaphysics of relevant civilizations?

The basic metaphysics of the Apollonian/Classical High Culture was said to be locality - the present time (locality in time) and locality in space, the Magian High Culture was focused on “the world as cave or cavern,” and the Faustian/Western High Culture was (and is) characterized as "thrusting upward into infinite space.” The Overman High Culture instead could have a metaphysics of reality as information, observation, interaction, structure, and space expanding infinitely both outward and inward.  Thus, we observe the primacy of genetic information as opposed to phenotype (see my work, pssobly rpresentative of the new perspective?), quantum mechanics (observation, interaction), relativity theory (structure of spacetime), nuclear physics, etc. Quantum mechanics and nuclear physics expand inward, while relativity theory expands outward, but in a structured manner (e.g., Minkowski spacetime diagrams). The new perspective considers dimensionality as important, not only in spacetime but in the human experience. Let us consider the (first iteration of) opening of the famous TV series The Twilight Zone (putting aside complaints of “Jewishness”). The “fifth dimension” is one related to human experience and the unknown, and there is a sense of existentialism; indeed, a right-wing existentialism that is not traditionalist could delve into aspects of a new cultural zeitgeist.

I will actually answer the “but you are referring to Jewish activities” complaints. Yes, Jews are of the Magian High Culture and are not part of the West and I doubt that they will be part of any future European High Culture. But Jews are a clever people and as Yockey noted they know how to exploit other High Cultures to promote their interests, even their personal interests (fame, money, status, etc.), never mind their group interests. It is therefore possible that some Jews have sensed a change in the civilizational zeitgeist and therefore they formulate memes and activities that leverage interest in these changes.

Let us consider some examples. Relativity theory is “Jewish” but Einstein in his thought experiments extrapolated from the work of Maxwell and other Europeans to produce Special Relativity; General Relativity is a further extrapolation from the Special theory. So, relativity may be “Jewish” but it tapped into ideas originating among Europeans and (unknowingly) situated these ideas in a novel theory that could fit into the metaphysics of a new High Culture. Quantum mechanics and genetics, as well as information theory, have been mostly European products, with later Jewish contributions. Nuclear physics is a mixed European-Jewish affair; the original work was European. With respect to politics and the arts, fascism and futurism are of European origin. Note that the most “Avant Garde” fascism is French in origin and futurism has strong Italian connections. They are not Jewish. To the extent that The Twilight Zone reflected existentialist themes, existentialism is essentially European. So, we cannot say that in these things that Jewish influence was absolutely decisive, and in any case such influence reflects undercurrents that are ultimately of European origin.

To summarize with respect to possible manifestations of resentment and hostility of an embryonic new (Overman) European High Culture to Pseudomorphosis from the Western High Culture, we can say the following. In politics and the arts, the signs are more clear, and with respect to philosophy, Nietzsche and the existentialists may reflect this as well. The more dispassionate nature of science makes resentment and hostility more difficult to detect, but one can say there is, at least, frustration with respect to serious problems in being able to understand and articulate a new (scientific) metaphysics given limitations imposed by a Western Faustian background.

However, note that the major objective of this essay is NOT to “prove” that another European High Culture is coming, what its characteristics would be, that it is the Overman High Culture, and that we can see definitive signs of resentment and hostility due to Pseudomorphosis. No, instead the argument, based on using the Overman example as a model system, is that in theory we may be able to discern something about an embryonic High Culture by considering how Pseudomorphosis from an older High Culture may affect the newer form, and then looking carefully for reactions – resentment and hostility, or at least frustration – to point us in the direction of some characteristics of the new form and how it is being impeded by Pseudomorphosis.  Thus, the argument here is that Diagnostic Pseudomorphosis is possible. Whether such an exercise can yield useful information is another matter.

The Moral State

Considerations.

See here.

Salter rightfully criticizes the pure utilitarian ethic from the standpoint of justice.  He provides a theoretical example that I can paraphrase here. Imagine a murder committed in a town, and the local vagrant is suspected.  The police chief then discovers the vagrant is innocent and that the murder was committed by the mayor, who has been an upstanding citizen and a long-standing important member of the town community.  The crime was one of passion and will be unlikely to ever be repeated, while the vagrant is a constant troublemaker. Convicting the vagrant on the basis of partial or invented evidence would be best for the long-term well-being of the town, while arresting and convicting the mayor would cause social upheaval in the town, damage the town’s nascent tourist industry, and cause widespread economic dislocation and hardship for residents.  A purely utilitarian reading of the situation is to let the vagrant hang and let the mayor off Scott-free, but, as Salter notes, this offends our sense of justice (for most of us anyway).  That being so, the utilitarian ethic needs to be balanced by individual rights, and by certain normative values. Pure utility is not sufficient for a truly just ethic.

Thus, Salter suggests a “mixed ethic” where the pursuit of ethnic genetic interests (EGI) is constrained by ethics based on some sort of moral standards. We observe the requirement for moral standards, an ethical code, which should be independent of pure adaptive interests.

There are other potential problems here as well. A purely rational utilitarian state, for example, one dedicated to optimizing EGI as the highest priority and as the overarching imperative, is unlikely to inspire in the people the sort of dedication required to achieve societal objectives. Consider this.

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.

Thus, some type of "irrational" spiritual, ethical, and moral code, in this case associated with "Yockeyism," can serve as the basis of a worldview that motivates and unifies the populace, and inspires adherence to conduct conducive to EGI.

A purely utilitarian focus on pure EGI can also run into other problems:

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.

There needs to be a moral structure to the state, independent of pure adaptive utilitarianism. Now, that moral structure can (and should) be used instrumentally to favor adaptive, EGI-focused ends. But the moral structure should exist not only for the purpose of promoting a racial state and for making the pursuit of EGI, of adaptive fitness, more palatable to the population – keeping in mind that humans are apparently evolved to benefit from some sort of religious/spiritual beliefs – but has benefits in its own right. Indeed, there needs to be a balance between a "pure ethic" of unrestrained pursuit of genetic interests, and morality that constrains the unrestrained pursuit of absolute EGI, a pursuit that can lead to “maladaptive genetic atomization.” Certainly, as alluded to in that The Occidental Quarterly piece, Yockeyism can be part of the equation; we should remember that a “rebirth of Faith” was cited by Yockey as an integral part of his predicted, and promoted, Imperium.

What can we say about this sense of morality?

Morality can be independent of religion, although, historically, in the Western civilization (and in Late Antiquity), The Moral State was associated with Christianity. Readers of this blog know that I am hostile to Christianity. However, there are certain elements in (Europeanized) Christianity that can be of benefit to society if – and only if – these ideals are limited to one’s own people, rather than to all of humanity (in other words, particularism vs. universalism), and are tempered by adaptive interests and pragmatic prudence. Brotherhood, if limited to ethny, can be positive, as can be charity, similarly limited, restraint of hatred of (personal) enemies and a degree of forgiveness, again limited to the ethny, etc. Aspects of these positive characteristics of Christianity can be incorporated into the moral ideas of a secular moral state.

This is in no way incompatible with an anti-Christian appeal to higher, Nietzschean values; there is nothing that says that such values have to be “immoral” or “amoral” based on the innate human moral sense, but we can, and should construct, our own morality, independent of the dogmas of the past, including that of Christianity, while incorporating whatever was good and just from those past dogmas.

What I suggest is that a proper state based on principles of the Sallis Groupuscule should have a foundation of EGI and adaptive fitness, with the edifice of Yockeyism built upon it, with these two poles of activity and of interest synergizing in the manner described in The Occidental Quarterly article linked to above. 

But there needs to be a moral underpinning for both poles; Salter describes moral, ethical, and philosophical justifications for EGI in Part III of On Genetic Interests, while Yockey, in contrast, considers his Imperium to derives organically from a Spenglerian view of history, as well as the destiny of Western Man. But Yockey does consider Faith as a key part of the authoritarian future of the West. He assumed this will be religious, I suppose in the Christian sense, but we can instead substitute a secular form of morality.  Intra-racial brotherhood, the Golden Rule, respect for oneself and for others (who deserve it), self-overcoming, discipline, hard work, futurist progress, a rejection of free-riding and a more disinterested willingness to invest in collective social goods, a healthy balance between helping oneself and an adaptively-informed “altruism,” avoiding socially destructive behaviors, the list can go on, but the point is that Christianity has no monopoly on “righteous behavior” (however defined). The moral standards that define European culture, both before and after the advent of Christianity, can assist in the development of the secular Moral State. Inherent moral and spiritual characteristics of European Man – see the works of Duchesne to observe how we differ from others – can serve as the basis of Good vs. Bad, independent of old religious dogma. There may very well be some overlap with that dogma, in the cases in which that dogma was formed by the same inherent impulses; in other cases, the morality will be quite different. But it will be suited for our people and their destiny, not something imposed by alien peoples and cultures.

The Moral State will be based on the moral standards of the populace, its leaders, and culture; conversely, The Moral State itself can help direct and guide the development of the moral standards of the people and their culture. Codreanu's Legionary Movement, and its emphasis on the "New Man," and a high moral and ethical culture, can also inform the development of the characteristics of The Moral State.

A non-Christian basis for The Moral State may also be informed by considerations such as described here. Indeed, The Moral State may become the seed of a new beginning, a new High Culture, on in which Faustian impulses are achieved, but with the constraints of an overarching morality that directs activity in the direction of principles consistent with beauty, knowledge, and higher goals.

And the type of individuals who should be prominent in the leadership of such a state is described here. The type of “leaders” found in today’s (American) “movement” – meritless affirmative action hacks, money-hungry grifters, gaslighting liars, inept incompetents with no sense of personal responsibility or accountability, shameless hustlers and mountebanks, sweaty obsessive fetishists, conspiracy theorists, drug addicts, sexual perverts, the chronically impaired with piss-poor judgment – these need to be eschewed. There is no place in The Moral State for failed “leaders” such as that. We deserve better. Our people, our race, and our civilization deserve better. We can and must do better.

Nietzsche, Napoleon, and the Overman

A more mature analysis.

Here I discuss a more mature analysis of Napoleon compared to the moronic “movement” drivel described here.

Thus, an analysis of: Nietzsche's Napoleon: The Higher Man as Political Actor, by Paul F. Glenn. In all cases, red font emphasis added:

Abstract

Nietzsche's concept of the higher man is often seen as vague. The article adds concreteness to the concept by studying an example of a higher man, Napoleon. Napoleon embodied power and spiritual health, and was therefore an admirable person.  By looking at Nietzsche's description of Napoleon as an artist, we also gain insight into the higher man as a political actor: he uses the public arena as the medium on which he practices his art. In doing so, he presents himself as a exemplar of humanity, inspiring others to seek their own path to excellence.  By studying this, we gain important insight into Nietzsche's political teaching. But Nietzsche's account of Napoleon is not one-sided: he also describes Napoleon's corruption. The fall of a higher man is both a warning of the dangers of the political realm, and a reminder that sickness and health are closely connected. Even the mightiest individual is fragile.

And now, with the same emphasis added, I’ll comment on some interesting selected excerpts from Glenn’s work.

One of Nietzsche's frequently cited examples of an actually existing higher man was Napoleon Bonaparte. 

That view contrasts to the cartoonish, sweaty fetishist “movement” view of Napoleon.

As he noted in Ecce Homo, "I never attack persons; I merely avail myself of the person as a strong magnifying  glass that allows one to make visible a general but creeping and  elusive calamity." 

The same applies to Ted Sallis. I  do not critique “movement” personages out of personal animus, but because such individuals represent certain “movement” principles and dogmas I wish to examine and deconstruct, and so each of these people represent “a strong magnifying  glass that allows one to make visible a general but creeping and  elusive calamity."

Just as his critiques of individuals point toward larger issues, so his praise also indicates a general point. Napoleon embodies many of the qualities Nietzsche admired, but more important he was a political leader in an egalitarian era dominated by a populist ethos.

Napoleon therefore exemplifies how greatness is possible in a time of spiritual weakness and widespread cultural decay. 

Yes, but that required Napoleon to work within that egalitarian milieu, leading to actions and policies that make racialists look askance, as well as led to his own downfall (both literally and from the Nietzschean perspective).  More on that below.

By studying Nietzsche’s description of Bonaparte, we can learn something about the higher man as a political actor.

This is of great interest to us, actors in the political sphere – politics broadly defined (e.g., Yockey – “politics is activity in relation to power”).  Far Right activism is a form of politics.  How is the Nietzschean conception of “the higher man” compatible (or not) with the Far Right political perspective?  With our goals and aspirations?

But though he admired Napoleon, he did not do so for typical reasons. In his descriptions of the French emperor, Nietzsche never mentions Bonaparte's great victories at Austerlitz and Jena. Nor does he care about the glorification of France-in his later works, Nietzsche repeatedly denounced all forms of nationalism.

Author’s Footnote: As will be discussed later, Nietzsche regarded Napoleon's nationalism as a sign of weakness and decay.

This puts into question what Nietzsche’s views on racial nationalism would be. True enough, Nietzsche’s hostility toward the nationalism of his day was more regarding the sort of jingoistic petty nationalism so loved by today’s ethnonationalists.  Would Nietzsche – the “good European” – view pan-European racial nationalism therefore as a positive antidote to Greg Johnson’s embrace of petty nationalism?

Instead, Nietzsche characterizes Napoleon as a higher man for who he was, not what he did. The extraordinary character of the man, and not his accomplishments, marks him as elevated.  Napoleon was a being of great power and thus stands as a symbol of what the highest exemplars of humanity can become. For this reason, Nietzsche includes him in a list of "the more profound and comprehensive men of this century” (BGE, 256) and frequently praises him.

This is an important point, and one Glenn comes back to at various points in his essay. To Nietzsche, greatness is measured by what a man (and only men, not women – Glenn makes clear that Nietzsche, viewing women as inferior, does not believe them capable of true greatness) is, not the specifics of what he does.  Now, of course, that is not to say that the great man’s actions are irrelevant; after all, they are the signs by which one can recognize a man of being worthy of being examined for signs of greatness. If Napoleon had merely been a “great soul” living on Corsica as some local bigwig, Nietzsche would never had heard of him, nor would be interested in him if he had.  If Goethe – another Nietzsche hero and great man – had merely been a schoolteacher somewhere, how would the “great soul” have been manifested?  Of course, if Napoleon had been merely a local Corsican “big shot” and Goethe merely a schoolteacher, then neither would have been a “great soul” to begin with, as their inner greatness would not have been satisfied with those stations in life. So, accomplishments help mark greatness, but they are, to Nietzsche, merely means to an end – the manner in which the great man exercises his will to power – than ends to themselves.  Napoleon could have just as easily been an anti-French Austro-Hungarian or German from the Nietzschean perspective. It is not the specifics of the accomplishments, it is not “what he did.” This of course presents problems for us here who have definitive goals, and wish great men to step forward and prioritize the race rather than themselves. From the Nietzschean perspective, that’s degenerate.  

The core of Nietzsche's scathing attack on modernity is its weakness. Modernity represents the triumph of values like equality, humanism, peace, and the freedom of the will, which are slavish values: their origin lies in weakness not strength. The French Revolution and the subsequent spread of democratic values in its wake represent a new high point for the hegemony of slave values.  Nearly everyone now accepts these values as truth.

Everyone who is part of the System’s “hive mind.”

In the midst of the spread of such values, however, atavistic individuals have appeared, harkening back to an aristocratic past.

Traditionalism!  Evola-ites start sweating and foaming at the mouth.

The core of the soul is its constituent complex of drives and affects. In a strong individual, these drives are formidable-they are not easily sated or resisted, but fervently push the individual toward their objects. At times the drives are so strong that they push the person toward self-destruction: often, our drives seek a goal which will destroy us (Z, "On Self-Overcoming").  Nietzsche therefore argues that self-preservation represents a degeneration of the instincts (BGE, 13). 

That last part puts into question what Nietzsche’s views on racial preservationism would have been.  A strictly literal reading of his views would mean that racial preservationism – self-preservation on a racial level – “represents a degeneration of the instincts” and that a Faustian overcoming of race is compatible with higher drives. I do not say I agree with this, as I view EGI as fundamental, and EGI depends upon racial (and ethnic) preservation.  But as the “movement” values Nietzsche, it needs to be honest about his views and how those views relate to “movement” objectives.  One could argue that a Yockeyian “horizontal race” view is more consistent with Nietzsche’s ideas than a “vertical” “zoological race” concept.  Again, I do not say I personally agree with that viewpoint.

Unlike many of the militant romantics whom he inspired, Bonaparte had no use for glory and accolades because he scorned those who bestowed such honors. And Bonaparte felt no need to obey the moral dictates of those he saw as inferior. For example, when Napoleon was con­fronted  by his wife with charges of infidelity, Nietzsche claims that  he responded "I have  the right  to answer  all accusations against  me with  an eternal  'That's  me.' I am apart from all the world and accept conditions from nobody. I demand subjection even to my fancies, and people should find it quite natural when I yield to this or that distraction" (GS, 23).

Napoleon the champion of the manosphere?  Dark Triad traits?

Author’s Footnote: This account of what makes for great character fits with several other of Nietzsche's writings. For example, in On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life, he describes creativity of the Greeks in similar language:  "The Greeks gradually learned to organize the chaos” (UM, II. 10). And in  Beyond  Good and Evil section 200 he notes that the warring drives that result from ethnic mixing can be mastered by noble ones (such as Alcibiades and Caesar).

So, a prominent Periclean-Age Greek (actually a nephew of Pericles himself) and a prominent Patrician Roman from the Republic were considered “ethnically mixed” by Nietzsche:

The man from an age of dissolution, which mixes the races all together, such a man has an inheritance of a multiple ancestry in his body, that is, conflicting and frequently not merely conflicting drives and standards of value which war among themselves and rarely give each other rest - such a man of late culture and disturbed lights will typically be a weaker man. His most basic demand is that the war which constitutes him should finally end. Happiness seems to him, in accordance with a calming medicine and way of thinking (for example, Epicurean or Christian), principally as the happiness of resting, of having no interruptions, of surfeit, of the final unity, as the "Sabbath of Sabbaths," to use the words of the saintly rhetorician Augustine, who was himself such a man. But if the opposition and war in such a nature work like one more charm or thrill in life - and bring along, in addition to this nature's powerful and irreconcilable drives, also the real mastery and refinement in waging war with itself, and thus transmit and cultivate self-ruling and outwitting of the self, then arise those delightfully amazing and unimaginable people, those enigmatic men predestined for victory and temptation, whose most beautiful expressions are Alcibiades and Caesar (- in their company I'd like to place the first European, according to my taste, the Hohenstaufer Frederick II), and, among artists, perhaps Leonardo da Vinci.8 They appear precisely in the same ages when that weaker type, with its demands for quiet, steps into the foreground: both types belong with one another and arise from the same causes.

Note also Frederick II and - perhaps - Leonardo da Vinci to go along with Alcibiades and Caesar. Now, Nietzsche of course is not a population geneticist nor an anthropologist (nor is Kemp or any other “movement activist” for that matter), and his opinions on this matter are just that – opinions. Nevertheless, it is interesting to observe how the "movement's" favorite philosopher stakes out a position so different from official “movement” dogma.

The outward manifestation of a great soul is a vibrant and charismatic personality, something both Goethe and Napoleon clearly possessed…

Apparently then, Sallis (and Nietzsche himself) would not be defined as a “great soul.”  Actually no one in the “movement” would be. In fact, what prominent person today would be?  By Nietzschean standards, we live in the age of the Last Man.

Napoleon and Goethe were able to overcome the mediocrity and pettiness of the eighteenth century because of their magnificent souls. Both resisted the narrow-minded bigotry of nationalism and instead aspired to create a pan-European culture and political arena (WP, 104). 

Pan-European…not ethnonationalist.

Like Nietzsche they rejected petty national boundaries…

Rejecting Greg Johnson and the other ethnonationalists.

…and sought to be good Europeans.  

Indeed.

Both rejected the egalitarianism prevalent at the time and sought to invoke the pathos of distance characteristic of the noble soul. 

Glenn contradicts this, regarding Napoleon, in this same essay – implying that Napoleon had to compromise with the egalitarian and populist zeitgeist of his time.

And both were firmly grounded in reality, overcoming the flight into imagination of romanticism.  The strength of soul of the two men ranks them among the highest of the modern era and marked them as radiant exemplars of humanity.

While the “movement” may agree about Goethe, it certainly would not agree about Napoleon, which we have seen.

Napoleon as Artist

We have seen that Nietzsche held Napoleon in high repute, but we have not yet discovered how Nietzsche’s account of Napoleon can help us understand the relationship between the higher individual and the political actor. I think an answer to this question can be offered by examining a somewhat curious component of Nietzsche’s descriptions of Bonaparte: his characterization of Napoleon as an artist in a number of passages. 

Politics, then, is not a lesser pursuit than art.  It is another possible realm of creativity.

Indeed. And it is politics, broadly defined, that talented pro-White activists need to focus their activity on, as their art.

Napoleon is as much an artist-and thus as highly valorized as sculptors, musicians, painters, and writers…Napoleon is not an artist who also happens to be a leader; his art is his political action…

A second key point about Nietzsche's aesthetics is that artistic creation is connected to power. 

Remember Yockey’s definition of politics – activity in relation to power.

Art as a representation of the artist's soul explains the third key point of Nietzsche's aesthetics: art serves as an incentive to life. When viewing art (or reading literature or philosophy), we are tempted to strive for our own creation and greatness by the brilliant image of the artwork. But what draws us upward is not simply the painting itself-it is the image of the artist lurking within the painting. 

This view suggests that the art is a portal to look into the artist’s soul, and it is that we are ultimately reacting to.

Art serves as a stimulus to life-both for the artist himself and for the spectator-because it lures us upward to higher pursuits. 

Inspiration by art.  But since High Politics can be art, we should be inspired by that as well. But in which direction? Do we listen to Nietzsche and accept that the objective of the political activity is secondary to the greatness of the man?

Napoleon  was (at least initially) a monological  artist-he engaged  in politics  for his own  purposes, not  to promote  the agenda of any group  or the glory of the French nation…This  fits  with Nietzsche's repeated statements that  one  misunderstands the  great  person if one judges him from the viewpoint of public utility: the monological artist does not care about the audience, and thus does not work for the general welfare.

This is THE crucial point of this essay.  Nietzsche viewed the accomplishments of great men as a means to an end – a way for them to exercise their will to power and to display their greatness, to manifest and actualize their great soul in the realm of achievement, in the case of Napoleon, political achievement.  A great man may have done X and not Y, but to Nietzsche, he could have equally done Y and not X – if that had been sufficient to demonstrate his superiority as a "higher man."

But we of the Far Right value specific goals most of all. Racial preservationists struggle for the survival of the White race (or in some cases, like the Nordicists and/or ethnonationalists and/or ethnic fetishists, some fraction of it). Salterians stress the EGI component of racial preservationism. Phenotypists care about preserving certain racial phenotypes.  Yockeyians want to build the Imperium, the Empire of the West.  HBDers – their leaders at least – want to enslave Whites to Jews and Asians.  Silk Road White nationalism is all about black-booted Chinese girls with guns ruling the West, with omega White males getting some sort of masochistic sexual thrill from it.  There are various ethnic, racial, religious, social, and political permutations of the Far Right, some compatible with each other, some incompatible.  But these are specific goals, specific objectives. Those dedicated to these goals – who would be considered “degenerate” by Nietzsche – would be less admiring of the greatness of a man who cared nothing for these objectives, and would oppose a great man who leveraged opposition to these goals to manifest his greatness.

It should be noted at this point that Glenn suggests that Nietzsche realized that Napoleon was working within the zeitgeist of his time, that being an egalitarian and populist one. Thus, the aspects of Napoleon’s ethnoracial policies that the “movement” objects to were not the result of Napoleon’s innate racial liberalism and aracial universalism (projecting modern “high trust northern hunter gatherer” pathologies on past historical figures), but more of a cynical ploy to leverage the French Revolutions memetic legacy to further Napoleon’s personal ambitions.

The “movement” pontificates:

But, as a French biographer of Napoleon and spokesman for the contemporary Establishment observes, “Bonaparte had no [racial] prejudices; Egyptians, Sudanese, Jews from Alexandria were all integrated into the Imperial Guard.”

Several points here.  First, if, as Glenn suggests, Napoleon was a reflection of his time, and his will to power had to be exercised through the egalitarian zeitgeist of his time – Napoleon coming through the chaos of the French Revolution – then this may be the source of his supposed racial universalism. Second, let’s consider “movement” hypocrisy here. A comment from a biographer, the presence of some non-Europeans in the Imperial Guard (as well as the emancipation of the Jews) is enough to damn Napoleon.  On the other hand, let’s consider how the “movement” considers the pro-Black leftist Hubert Humphrey, who pushed policies that resulted in unbelievable hardship and suffering for White Americans:

Hubert H. Humphrey is exactly the sort of person we need on our side. Humphrey was a liberal idealist, of course, but he wasn’t a philosopher, he was a doer.

Why not the same attitude toward Napoleon?  Well, consider Humphrey’s ancestry:

His father’s family were of New England Puritan stock. His grandmother, Addie Regester Humphrey, taught at a Quaker school, and Humphrey’s mother, Christine Sannes, was from Norway. Humphrey was baptized into his mother’s Lutheran church, but he worshiped later in life as both a Methodist and a Congregationalist. Humphrey was thus genetically a mix of Minnesota’s native Nordic groups…

And, well, Napoleon was different. A Corsican of Tuscan ancestry, puny Napoleon cannot aspire to the racial grandeur of Hubert Humphrey, eh?  Ultimately, that’s the reason – the real reason - why Napoleon’s Imperial Guard composition puts him beyond the pale for the “movement,” while Humphrey’s promotion of racial destruction in America leads to:

Hubert H. Humphrey is exactly the sort of person we need on our side.

Ironically, just like Nietzsche, who admired Napoleon, the anti-Napoleon “movement” judges Napoleon Bonaparte vs. Hubert Humphrey solely based on who they were (in this case, ethnically), not what they did.  And if the riposte to my accusation of hypocrisy is that the Napoleon and Humphrey essays were written by two different people on two different forums, my response is that they are ideologically similar; indeed, it is highly doubtful that each would find fault in the work of the other. They are both part of a highly integrated “movement” dogma, so it is perfectly reasonable to suggest, to quote Jack Vance, “It is all one.”

As speaking of hypocrisy, if Napoleon was so bad for having some non-Europeans in his Imperial Guard, what about the Holy Nazis having non-European military units, including in the Waffen SS?

Also – if Napoleon had achieved all of his objectives in Europe, I find it highly unlikely he would have used his position to invite the Third World to invade the continent.  No, it was the German Merkel who did that. If Napoleon had conquered Great Britain, he would not have flooded the island with Negroes and South Asians; the British people did that to themselves.  The French navy was not transporting Afro-Asiatics into Europe – leave that to modern day Germans and Norwegians.  Where is Andrew Hamilton critiquing all of that?

If Napoleon had escaped to America, the man who tried to reconquer Haiti would not have championed Negro emancipation – the New England abolitionists did that. Napoleon would not have fomented slave rebellions, as John Brown did.

Hypocritical much?

It is for this reason that Nietzsche writes in places that rule by the higher individuals can be extremely dangerous to the general populace. 

If the “movement” considers Hitler to be such a “higher individual” then we can observe the greet damage done by him to the German people and to Europeans in general. I doubt though that Nietzsche would have considered Hitler a great man given Nietzsche’s opinions on nationalism and degeneration, being a Good European, and putting specific goals – always primary for Hitler – secondary to exerting one’s will to power.  I suspect he would have had a higher opinion of Mussolini, but even Il Duce far behind Napoleon.  This is not to endorse Nietzsche’s views, as I have stated.

Napoleon is a great figure because of the power and vitality of his soul, not because of anything he accomplished.

Again, this is the key point of departure between Nietzsche and those who place utility of action as the highest priority.

Consider the next author’s footnote.

Author’s Footnote: This is not to say that outcomes are simply unimportant: after all, it would be impossible to know the greatness of a person without any artifacts. But Nietzsche is clear that outcomes are secondary, mere symptoms of who the person is…

The key is this – IF we assume Nietzsche is correct, can we get great men (if we can find any) to accept our goals as the vehicle through which to express their greatness?  Even if the goals are secondary to them – if not to us – can we associate greatness and pro-White accomplishment so to create a “win-win” situation for both the great man and his people? Conversely, can we create an environment that dissuades great men from acting contrary to the interests of their people?  After all, in the current zeitgeist, a great man unconcerned with the direction of the actual outcome of his activity may be tempted to act within the constraints of that zeitgeist, as Napoleon did in his time. That would be devastating to us. Consider how dire the situation is when we have spiritual pygmies, gross defects, as adversaries, and then imagine what would occur if a Napoleon-like figure took up the cause of the System’s anti-Whiteness.

This means that Napoleon did not act simply to bring about a particular objective. While an aesthetic view of politics like this does not rule out efforts to promote specific goals, such goals are ultimately of secondary importance. Nietzschean politics is expressivist, not outcome-oriented…The value of political action, just as with art, is rooted in the act itself, not any consequences that stem from it. Napoleon sought to use the public arena as a testing ground for himself, as the medium through which to express and challenge his vitality. He did not enter politics in order to promote a specific agenda.

Yes, I believe we get the constantly repeated point by now.  The question is whether we accept it and then, if we do, how can we get great men to act in our behalf. Whether or not we define greatness in the same manner as Nietzsche is a matter of choice, but there seems to be some truth in that great men are motivated at least in part by personal will to power disassociated from specific objectives.  I’m not sure that Nietzsche is correct in the totality and universality of that. Is it possible to have a great man that puts the goal at least equal to that of himself? I think yes, but regardless, we must have great men who – authentically or not – promote our views as the vehicle of manifestation, the actualization, of their greatness.

This argument suggests that Nietzsche offers a political teaching decidedly different from the Western tradition of political philosophy. Since Plato, political philosophy has sought to use the public realm for instrumental reasons.  While thinkers  may have disagreed  over what ends should  be sought-from  Plato's promotion  of virtue  to Machiavelli's  insistence on stability and endurance-all  thinkers accepted the  instrumental  view. Nietzsche’s philosophy suggests a very different understanding of politics. Political action is valuable for the deed itself, not for any consequences that flow from it. The higher individual, Nietzsche argues, should not make the decision to enter the public realm based on what can be achieved, but on whether the action itself can serve one's soul.

We can argue otherwise – but can we tie “serving one’s soul” to the action of promoting the race?  This all seems to be a uniquely White problem.  The leaders of other races always make serving their own people the primary focus of their action.  Is it that there have never been any truly great non-White men?  Regardless, one is hard-pressed to think of non-Whites (great by Nietzsche’s standards or other standards) that rose to prominence through race treason.

Viewing Napoleon in this manner seems to raise a problem. If Napoleon acted only to further his own goals and did not seek to promote the good of humankind, then why does Nietzsche attribute such tremendous influence to him? 

Napoleon did not much care for promoting greatness in others.  

How can one who consciously serves only his own soul promote greatness in others?

This does not mean that Napoleon could not promote great­ness in others, but it would have to be achieved by indirect means. By embodying the values of a nobler time, Napoleon left an indelible impression of what humanity can become at its peak. 

So, he was an inspiration for greatness.

It is here that we see Nietzsche's loftiest tribute to Napoleon-the emperor appears as something of a miracle, a man comparable to the greatest men of ancient times amidst the disease of modernity. Nietzsche goes so far as to suggest that Napoleon's appearance may lead to the self-overcoming of decadence in Europe…

Quite the different view from that of the “movement.”

If the crisis of the West stems from the nihilism resulting from the false metaphysics of Christian values, then Napoleon was an earth-shaking figure: he offered a way out of our illness, a way of overcoming Christianity. This suggests that  the  higher  man  can  achieve eminence  in the political realm as well as other spheres…Political action is a legitimate  realm for the efforts of the higher  man.

“Legitimate realm” – but according to Nietzsche it doesn’t matter precisely what politics are practiced as long as the “higher man” exercises his will to power and accomplishes things to promote his own self-worth. Of course, one can argue that Nietzsche was somewhat hypocritical – assuming if he considered himself as being a higher type (Ecce Homo, assuming sanity on the part of the author, which is questionable , suggests that he did so) – since he promoted certain memes as being “good” and others “bad.”  But that aside, let’s continue with this analysis.

There are two key passages in which Nietzsche discusses Napoleon’s demise. The first is at the end of Will to Power, note 1026. He writes that Bonaparte "was corrupted by the means he had to employ and lost noblesse of character." 

‘Had to employ” – suggesting that Napoleon promoted certain ideas because of the era in which he lived, the egalitarian ethos of the France of his time. What was Saint Adolf’s excuse for his South Asian SS unit?

 It seems clear that the means of which  Nietzsche  speaks  are  the  methods and  practices  of democracy…It seems  likely  that Napoleon  was corrupted by democracy.

That is reasonable.

He succumbed to his own myth, coming to believe that he was the great servant of the French nation… Nietzsche makes this point in the other relevant passage. In Beyond Good and Evil, section 256, he remarks that great men of his time succumbed to nationalism in moments of weakness: "only in their foregrounds or in weaker hours, say in old age, did they belong to the 'fatherlandish'-they were merely taking a rest from themselves when they became 'patriots."' Napoleon fell prey to the ideal of service to the nation-a form of nationalism, and connected to populism-when he declined…To paraphrase Urnberto Eco, the habit of pretending to believe evolved into the habit of believing.

So, Nietzsche argues (according to Glenn) that a great man who becomes a “true believer” has become degenerate and will fail - decline is linked to placing a specific goal (e.g., serving a people in a nationalistic “fatherlandish” manner) as the priority, rather than serving self.

What does this say about using great men to serve our goals?  If they become true believers, then they decline and become failed degenerates – and in their failure take us and our goals down with them. If they remain self-centered, using our goals cynically to achieve their own personal objectives, at best they may “use us up” in their rise, ruining what we hope to achieve; at worst, they may betray us and our beliefs when doing so serves their purposes. We are left then with either rejecting Nietzsche’s formulation of greatness and instead accepting the great men can at least hold true belief as equal to their own self- aggrandizement, or we have to view great men as potential enemies of our racial objectives. I would promote the former idea, that greatness and true belief are not incompatible.

What does Napoleon’s ultimate failure tell us about Nietzsche’s view of the higher man? It offers a warning and a reminder. First, it is a strong warning of the dangers of the political realm. While it is true that the higher man can use politics just as an artist uses paint and canvas, there are dangers inherent to the political realm which can undermine the actor’s nobility of soul… 

This assumes that Nietzsche’s ideal of greatness is correct, and that the hurly-burly of political activity will “taint” the “noble soul” of the great man. If one take a utilitarian view, and if achieving a specific goal defines greatness, then doing what is necessary to achieve those goals will not necessarily undermine the “noble soul.”

Second, Nietzsche's account  of Napoleon  offers a sharp  re­minder  of the interconnectedness of illness and  health  in even the highest  people…The bad conscience, for example,  opened an entirely  new  arena  for creation-the  soul. Those who were strong were able to turn their disease into a new enticement to life, a new realm to be conquered. But the illness is always there; it cannot be excised completely. There­fore, there is a fine line between greatness and failure. The bad conscience makes all higher men fragile. Dissolution should be expected…Napoleon's failure is a reminder that greatness is an exceedingly fragile thing.  Even in the highest of people, decadence is just a short step away.

The same also applies to other great man other than Napoleon.

Unlike the otherworldly meaning and value provided by Christianity and similar moral codes, the greatness of people like Napoleon is immanent and not subject to the self-destructive flaws of Christian morality. Human greatness offers a way out of what Nietzsche refers to as "whole millennia of labyrinth”…

The Overman High Culture.

The failure of the higher man is thus tragic because it deprives us of something magnificent, but it is also almost expected.

If it is “almost expected” then can it be something that can be planned for?  Can the waxing and waning of great men be leveraged to assist in achieving the objectives of all of we “degenerates” who focus on specific goals?

Although he is frightening and brings suffering in his wake, the higher man also brings with him the loftiest hopes of humanity. Napoleon wreaked havoc but also opened new possibilities, demonstrating a way out of the traps of Christianity.

I approve of the anti-Christian message here.  Note – “loftiest hopes of humanity” – quite a different view of Napoleon than that of the “movement.”

Three main take-away points.

First, there is a conflict between the Nietzschean expressionist view of greatness in the “higher man’ and the utilitarian view. The former sees the accomplishments as merely means to an end, the manifestation and actualization of the greatness, the reflection of the noble soul; the latter sees the accomplishments as the end themselves - the precise accomplishment of specific goals, and the effects that has, is what defines greatness. The former puts the man himself as the priority, what he is; the latter puts the man’s deeds as the priority, what he does.  Reality is no doubt a complex mix of both.

Second, if great men are still possible, great men of our race, we need to get at least some of them to pursue pro-White objectives, regardless of where reality lies on the expressivist-utilitarian spectrum.  However, keep in mind that the further reality lies in the direction of expressionism of greatness, the more difficult it will be it effectively utilize great men to achieve specific goals that benefit the race as opposed to benefitting the man at the expense of the race.

Third, we have seen, once again, the outrageous hypocrisy of the “movement.”  If Napoleon had some Egyptians in is Imperial Guard, we are supposed to recoil in horror, while South Asians in Hitler’s Waffen SS is “move on, move on, there’s nothing to see here.” If Napoleon had some vague racial universalist views – or pretended to have them – to fit in with the zeitgeist of his society, then he was a “chaotic destroyer.”  On the other hand, the racial universalism of Hubert Humphrey, which had real-life negative consequences for White America, means that he was an “idealist” and we need more men like him.

Shorn of its Nordicism and ethnic fetishism, the “movement" would not exist.  There is nothing else to it.

Sallis Footnote:

The author, in his footnotes, outlines how Walter Kaufmann, with mendacity, “whitewashed” Nietzsche’s ideas in order to make Nietzsche and his philosophy “safe” for the masses (after WII and the association of Nietzsche with Nazism and German nationalist militarism).

Read this about Kaufmann:

Kaufmann was raised a Lutheran. At age 11, finding that he believed neither in the Trinity nor in the divinity of Jesus, he converted to Judaism. Kaufmann subsequently discovered that his grandparents were all Jewish.

Who says genetics do not control behavior?  If we can believe that Kaufmann originally did not know he was ethnically Jewish, it is fascinating that he “converted” to Judaism and then subsequently found out he was genetically Jewish. Obviously he found Judaism more congenial than Christianity, although he later seems to have disavowed all organized religion – but not his Jewish ethnicity.