Yockey's Perception of Race in 'Imperium'

[Siegfried]

I am reading Yockey's Imperium, but there are some things I do not fully understand, especially regarding his 'vertical' and 'horizontal' nationalism, and the matter of 'Race'. My most important question is: would Yockey consider a fully 'integrated' Turkish (or even Negroid) man a 'European'? His comments that 'racial purity' is to about 'feeling' instead of physical appearance seems to point to this.
If anyone could give me some background information on Yockey's thoughts on race and nationalism, I would greatly appreciate it.

[cosmocreator]

I read that book. Though I thought it insightful, I didn't agree with him on his ideas of race. Can't remember much about it to say anything more at this time.

[Nihilist]

bah, I can't stand "nationalists" that discount the importance of race and instead uphold the unequivocal importance of "spiritual" and "cultural" nationalism. They're the sort of people that think the raising of a flag, or supporting of a national football team is what determinines ones loyalty to a nation; asininely oblivious to who and what encompasses that which they are venerating.

Culture is the affect of the innate characteristics which create it and without these native endowments, it cannot sustain itself.

[Jack]

I am reading Yockey's Imperium, but there are some things I do not fully understand, especially regarding his 'vertical' and 'horizontal' nationalism, and the matter of 'Race'. My most important question is: would Yockey consider a fully 'integrated' Turkish (or even Negroid) man a 'European'? His comments that 'racial purity' is to about 'feeling' instead of physical appearance seems to point to this.
If anyone could give me some background information on Yockey's thoughts on race and nationalism, I would greatly appreciate it.

Sure. Vertical nationalism is what could probably be better called 'national patriotism'. It is the strong identity of the nationality with the State, and the State with the nationality. I think what Yockey is trying to condemn is nationalist imperialism. Horizontal nationalism is very strong identity with your own nationality above your own State. So an Anglo-Celt living in America or Australia would feel more alliegence with his ethnic brothers in the British Isles than a Turk sharing the same citizenship as himself.

Yockey's 'race as feeling' comes in with 'race as spirit' as I put foward in the other thread. It isn't so much 'purity of phenotype' but purity of instinct - will to power - that he is talking about in that part. Yockey actually does mention that Asians, no matter what happens, can't become whites, and same goes with blacks. His idea that the 'soil' can change phenotype is rather simple. Australian troops, when they met the British troops during world war one, were considered giants. Why? Better food - you feed and exercise your men better in a better climate, and they'll develop better. And they did. Aussie troops, on average, were around a foot taller than British troops. This is what he means by 'change' between Europeans and American Europeans. Though it doesn't mean a great deal now, largely because of international trade (British are being fed better than they were a hundred years ago), back then the average American, Australian and people in Europe's colonies were a lot healthier, stronger, tougher than the average European.

Apart from that, Spengler's idea of race as something that can change depending on its soil comes from Goethe's 'evolution', which was based around how something grows and evolves to its final stage, not its genetics. Spengler tried using Franz Boas' 'anthropology' (which we now know is a pack of lies) to support his ideas. Goethe's idea of 'growth' as evolution was important to Spengler - his ideas of destiny (what is inwardly felt as imperetive) and the rise, height, decline and fall of Cultures were based around it. He took this idea, which was initially employed for biology, to use for history. He basically said Cultures were like plants - put them on something different from their home soil and they develop slower, which Yockey used to explain why America is a generation behind the Cultural development of Europe. Though this has changed, obviously, because America is now the nexus of Western Culture. Also, for Spengler, Culture is primarily spiritual, and race as biology doesn't account for much at all (though after reading Spengler's Decline of the West I had a pretty good idea he meant the ideas of intrinsic blood superiority of the Germans over the Slavs were a load of rubbish, and although in his reference to Boas indicates he genuinely though blacks were equal to whites and it was environmental and Cultural differences that seperated them.), but in the Hour of Decision (Rahul has read it, I haven't yet - I'm reading Gramsci first) Spengler definetly supports European nationalism (biologically and culturally).

Yockey doesn't think blacks are equal to whites, but he believes subrace means almost nothing socially, but phenotypical itself does. Btw, Yockey is Spengler politically regurgitated and improved.

[Nordgau]

Apart from that, Spengler's idea of race as something that can change depending on its soil comes from Goethe's 'evolution', which was based around how something grows and evolves to its final stage, not its genetics. Spengler tried using Franz Boas' 'anthropology' (which we now know is a pack of lies) to support his ideas. Goethe's idea of 'growth' as evolution was important to Spengler - his ideas of destiny (what is inwardly felt as imperetive) and the rise, height, decline and fall of Cultures were based around it. He took this idea, which was initially employed for biology, to use for history. He basically said Cultures were like plants - put them on something different from their home soil and they develop slower, which Yockey used to explain why America is a generation behind the Cultural development of Europe. Though this has changed, obviously, because America is now the nexus of Western Culture. Also, for Spengler, Culture is primarily spiritual, and race as biology doesn't account for much at all (though after reading Spengler's Decline of the West I had a pretty good idea he meant the ideas of intrinsic blood superiority of the Germans over the Slavs were a load of rubbish, and although in his reference to Boas indicates he genuinely though blacks were equal to whites and it was environmental and Cultural differences that seperated them.), but in the Hour of Decision (Rahul has read it, I haven't yet - I'm reading Gramsci first) Spengler definetly supports European nationalism (biologically and culturally).

Yockey doesn't think blacks are equal to whites, but he believes subrace means almost nothing socially, but phenotypical itself does. Btw, Yockey is Spengler politically regurgitated and improved.

If you take his whole work, it would be hard to say with one clear sentence Spengler's view on race.
Generally, it seems for me quite obvious that his standpoint, became from the "Decline" to the works of the late 20s and 30s more "racialist". I guess it also has to do because anthropology and race science did quite arise in the twenties, and also because the world dominance of the Europeans quite suffered after WW1.
I like what Spengler wrote on the "growth" of cultures and of cultures as "plants" as metaphor, but his morphology of world-history cannot be maintained as a metaphysical philosophy with all consequences as Spengler wrote it. I remember the sentence about the Negroes and Whites in America who become because of metaphysical morphologic changes similar to each other... Spengler's cultures seem in the "Decline" more like beings of their own which sink down coincidentaly on any human population in some part of the world. The cultural spirits have no base in the racial-biological condition of their bearers. That's of course somehow "Magic" thinking itself.
In "Man and Technics" then the fact that the white Europeans are the bearers of the Faustian will to power and that this has its deep reasons in the biological origin of this race is much clearer. Spengler gives here a great polarization between the Whites with their Faustian culture, which is in its ending, declining phasis, and all other races of the world which he summarizes as the "Coloureds". He took that up again in the last pages of the "Hour of Decision" where he warned the West not to power itself out through inner conflicts because of the coming "coloured revolution" which will be the active destructive element of the "decline of the West" (while the Coloureds until now only were passive material in the global spreading of the Faustian civilization). He spoke the same warning in a little text for an American broadcast company a few months before his death in 1936.
Spengler also gave in a letter to Wahrhold Drascher a positive comment about Drascher's book "The Predominance of the White Race". Spengler also was in the time before his death in correspondence with v. Eickstedt.

[Siegfried]

Thanks for the information, Aloysha. It cleared things up a bit.

His idea that the 'soil' can change phenotype is rather simple. Australian troops, when they met the British troops during world war one, were considered giants. Why? Better food - you feed and exercise your men better in a better climate, and they'll develop better. And they did. Aussie troops, on average, were around a foot taller than British troops. This is what he means by 'change' between Europeans and American Europeans. Though it doesn't mean a great deal now, largely because of international trade (British are being fed better than they were a hundred years ago), back then the average American, Australian and people in Europe's colonies were a lot healthier, stronger, tougher than the average European.

Though the environment indeed influences racial characteristics, it seems to me Yockey underestimated the importance of stock (or genetic heritage), and exaggerated the importance of ‘soil’ and spiritual factors like ‘the cosmic rhythm’.

It was discovered that for any given inhabited area of the world there was an average cephalic index of the population. More important, it was learned, through measurements on immigrants to America from every part of Europe, and then on their children born in America, that this cephalic index adheres to the soil and immediately makes itself manifest in the next generation.Thus long-headed Jews from Sicily, and short-headed ones from Germany, produced offspring with the same average head measure, the specifically American one.
Bodily size and span of growth were two other characteristics in which all types whatever in America, Indians, Negroes, white men, were found to have the same average, regardless of average size and growth-span of the countries or stocks from which they came. In the case of Irish immigrants, coming from a country of a very long growth-span, the response to the local influence was immediate.
Imperium, 'Race, People, Nation, State'

A lot of studies contradict this (those by Rushton, for example).

[Jack]

Thanks for the information, Aloysha. It cleared things up a bit.

No problem

Though the environment indeed influences racial characteristics, it seems to me Yockey underestimated the importance of stock (or genetic heritage), and exaggerated the importance of ‘soil’ and spiritual factors like ‘the cosmic rhythm’.

Spengler does the same thing - that's one of the several reasons I don't like Spengler. But I did gain some ideas from him.

A lot of studies contradict this (those by Rushton, for example).

Of course - as I said, both Spengler and Yockey were relying on Franz Boas's pseudo-scientific rubbish to support a case grounded in an evolutionary theory that had long been crushed by Darwinism. Now something new needs to be developed in the place of Spengler and Yockey's analysis of civilizations. I've started reading A Study of History: An abrigement of volumes I-IV by Arnold Toynbee, that might help with a few ideas, and I want to finish reading Selections from the Prison Notebooks fairly soon. And I've come across an interesting idea that I'm going to start a new thread around.

[Rahul]

What I like from the Decline is this piece on Race(Spirit).

A race has roots. Race and landscape belong together. Where a Plant takes root, it dies also. There is certainly a sense in which we can, without absurdity, work bakwards from a race to its "home," but it is much more important to realise that the race adheres permanently to its home with some of its most essential characters of body and soul. If in that home, if tha race cannot now be found, this means that the race has ceased to exist. A race does not migrate. men migrate and their successive generations are born in everchanging landscapes, but the landscape excercises a secret force upon the plant nature in them, and ecentually the race expression is completely transformed by the extinction of the old and the appearance of a new one.

- Aitkinson's Translation in the Decline

Now what we have is the prevailing power or at least some implicit subordination of men to the nature and land, of earth, this isn't entirely wrong.

I can agree to Spengler here given 1947 and how our own folk, got completely transformed following the migration from that landscape to this one. But somehow that landscape is still etched on to my mind's collections, and I feel that to be my real home. And there alone can I be with my Race again.

The feeling is very strong and it is backed by almost other evidence provided by Geology, Matereology and Anthropology.

I agree to Spengler here.

Some hidden force does indeed effect a change, achange against our life's destiny, or otherwise what can explain the American not rooting for the soil of Europe, However there are exceptions with certainty, as I am one in my own context, similar in many ways.

[Moody]

Yockey saw the overt biologism of certain war-time N-S theorists as being ultimately destructive and counter-productive.
Not least because it gave grounds to inter-subracial conflict amongst those of European descent.

Yockey had a pan-European vision and sought to balance biological notions of race with those of spiritual, cultural, and even enviromental [as Jack emphasises] notions.

I think Yockey's model is the most effective in the Modern World.